


(I want a scar that looks just like you) until I learn to be a wisher fool

by believe_that_you_can_my_friend



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, OTP Feels, Porn, Porn With Plot, basically this is as angsty as it can get, bughead - Freeform, mention of illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-01-23 21:17:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12516756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/believe_that_you_can_my_friend/pseuds/believe_that_you_can_my_friend
Summary: I need you like no other, no, I'll never find another…Or, ten years after high school, Betty turns up on Jughead’s door on a stormy autumn night.





	1. These violent delights have violent ends...

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by Vampire Smile by Kyla La Grange and Leave Your Lover by Echos, lyrics from which are the title and the summary of this story, respectively. 
> 
> A tale about best friends and inevitable choices.

A threatening thunder crushes angrily at the horizon, it’s lightening piecing through the heavy clouds and the roaring night sky before illuminating the foggy window he is leaning against, one hand tucked inside the pocket of his dark jeans and the other facing the cold of the mid-October air, as a half-burnt cigarette rests lazily between his pointer and middle finger. There’s an unwritten rule of no smoking inside the apartment and a promise that he’ll gradually quit the worst and only habit he ever acquired and he is breaking both of them at the moment but there’s something in the air tonight that has him indulging, a nostalgic essence, a melancholia, that makes him seek comfort in the familiar vice of nicotine.

Jughead feels alone and, for the first time, that brings him a delightful comfort.

Behind his back, New York is more buzzing than ever. It’s pouring since morning, the first real heavy storm of the season, and the fact has brought the usual commotion and big city drama. Angry horns, infuriated drivers, piercing sirens of fire trucks responding to emergencies in coordination with the rain droplets that are falling menacingly from the sky since the crack of dawn is the background echo of his whole day, feeding his gloomy mood and sullen writer’s aesthetic.

His fingers are ice cold when he brings the cigarette to his lips for a long, satisfying drug. His blue eyes narrow behind the play of tobacco smoke as he exhales and enjoys the distinct smell that lingers around him in the dimly-lit living room, as the chilly breeze of the open window is blowing west and deflects its sole purpose of airing the room. The much needed break from typing seems to be lasting nearly two hours now, and probably for the rest of the night, if he is being honest to himself, all the while he stays engrossed in the movie that is playing on his laptop, perched on the glass surface of the wooden coffee table.

 _Casablanca_ ; it’s a classic, his all-time favorite movie and it holds that certain doom and gloom that’s perfectly suitable for today’s evening.

(Or that’s how expertly he lies to himself.)

His phone vibrates on top of the modern rustic chest of drawers to his left, right under the statement wall of their living room – he didn’t even know that was a thing before she had happily presented her days’ work to him when large carton boxes were still littering their joined apartment– full of framed pictures in all shapes and sizes. He reluctantly tears his eyes from the screen with a displeased frown at whoever is calling him at such hour but the ID and the silly picture that pop up make his face relax and he actually smiles, tiny but still, at the easy feeling of contentment she brings the last couple of years in his life.

(Easy. What a _brilliant_ feeling.)

“Hey, crazy girl.” He greets her lazily, his blue eyes sliding back to his laptop as he smirks to himself.

“Uh-huh, Mr. Jones, missed me that much already?” her voice comes in her casual teasing through the line and succeeds in brightening his spirits. “Picking up on the second ring, my God, the end of the world is near us!”

He lets a soundless chuckle and an eye roll that he knows she knows he is sporting. “You’re just lucky it was next to me.”

“So you’re not burning the apartment down?” she muses in fake alarm, before letting a sweet little giggle at his playful groan.

“Contrary to popular belief, I can take care of myself without any adult supervision.” He retorts in all his usual sarcasm and it’s the same giggle again that this time makes him grin against the device.

He likes a lot of things about her, physical things. Her blonde hair, her tall, slim silhouette, her cute elf-like nose. And her giggle.

(It reminds him of a lot of other things that she isn’t.)

“So, how are you holding up without me, pretty boy?” her sweet voice and caring nature is something he appreciates too, very much so. The nickname, he is used to at this point. Six years ago, it felt foreign at the sound; now, it’s a term of endearment that flows so naturally through the walls of their apartment. He dares to think that he enjoys it.

“I’m managing. Between the new burger house down the road and some new recipes I picked up from the internet, I’m keeping myself well-fed and busy.” He admits casually as he puts out the almost burnt stud on the nearby astray and blocks the frosty air by shutting the window. He feels guilty talking to her and smoking in secret. She is a guru of organic diet and healthy living and he is betraying her, betraying her trust and his promise to take better care of himself for his sake.

“So I’m guessing writing isn’t going well, huh?” there’s an obvious flinch in her voice and Jughead feels grateful to her for empathizing and being here for him for every up or down.

“No, it’s fine. I’m getting pages done and from what Mark read he appears pleased.” He is not in his best period inspiration wise, but he is also not in his worst, pity-filled days of writer’s block. It’s good, life’s good at the moment.

An amused laugh is coloring her voice when she speaks again. “Then why are you stress-cooking?”

“I’m not!” He scoffs in reply, as he moves to the thermostat to raise up the temperature that has dropped due to the open window, before plopping on the leather couch in his typical reckless abandon.

“ _Please_ , you only pick up pans and spatulas when you’re in over your head with worries!” she insists in a high-pitched, knowing voice. “Which is still pretty surprising, cause, yes stress-eating I can get from the man that inhales food on a regular basis, but the stress-cooking? You’d never strike me for that type.” There’s that giggle again but now there’s a burden in his chest.

Because this was never his habit. It just stuck like a second skin, like a perfect reminder of the someone it always belonged to.

She thinks nothing bad of the pause that follows; she is used to his more reserved, closed-up personality after all those years. ( _It’s part of your charm_ , she had said to him once on one of their first dates at the Brooklyn Art Library.)

“I just hope there’s at least one recipe of those new ones that you can cook for me when I get back.” She jokes good-heartedly and he huffs a small laugh, despite his closed eyes and suddenly troubled mind. Her voice is like an easy breeze; it washes away his troubles, takes his mind off. He believes that’s a very significant quality to look for in a long-term partner.

“You know that I have a severe allergic reaction to your vegan self.” He jokes in that sardonic tone of his and then laughs along with her, carefree and effortless. “So how are things there? How’s the job going?” he raises the volume of his laptop just a tad before settling more comfortably on the couch, dropping a long limb on the empty space next to him.

“So and so.” There’s the distinct rustling of bedsheets as she huffs and Jughead frowns upon checking the clock on the accent table next to him. It’s nearly ten at night in New York, almost four in the morning in Stockholm. It’s his turn to worry. “I loved my studies, I’m passionate about my job but there’s so much you can do with eroded fossils the size of a thumb.” The sarcasm in her voice, which clearly she picked up from him, has him chuckling lightly.

“That’s why you’re up at this ungodly hour?” Jughead asks with a knowing smirk but with a hint of concern in his voice.

“No… It’s because I missed you, Jug.” 

She says it like a hushed complaint, in a longing tone that warms the inside of his chest and feeds the feelings he has for her, the feelings that she was patient enough to wait for him to grow when he was finally ready. But tonight something holds him back, something seems _off_.

He says it back anyway though because, yes, hazy mind or not, he does feel it too. Six years now, she is the life of this house, _his life_. “I missed you too, Bree.”   

(He doesn’t like it when their _easy_ gets _complicated_. And all because of that small part of him that still cannot let go.)

“At least you have Salem keeping you company. I only have an empty bed.” She grumbles adorably and, as if it senses it, the beautiful black cat that lays curled up on the lush Moroccan rug purrs against Jughead’s sock clad foot.

“Yeah, we’re quite the pals.” He smiles down at her in response and tickles affectionately the underside of her neck with his toes, before sighing against the phone. “And, hey, it’s just another week. We’ve survived five.”

“I know, I know. I just can’t wait to see your handsome face.” Comes Sabrina’s reply, funny voice coloring the adjective of appreciation towards his broody look.

It feels effortless again, the way he jokes back. “I could always send a photo.”

“And in return you’d be asking for…” she drags her sentence foxily, knowing him all too well.

“Any traditional Swedish treat you can find?”  Jughead finishes in fake naivety, hearing her bell-like laugh and smiling, a tad relieved that their easy-going nature of conversation is back.

“Of course.” She scoffs amused. “Well, that’s already been taken care of, baby. If I were you, I’d be planning a warm welcome.” She teases him and the naughtiness in her tone doesn’t get unnoticed by the man on the other end of the phone call. However, his mind is miles away in _Casablanca_ land, where the Buick convertible pulls up at the airport under heaps of heavy rain.

“I might have some ideas.” He tells her absentmindedly, twisting a lock of his unruly hair.

“I really can’t wait.” She lets him know saucily, the baritone essence of his voice succeeding in passing along some sexual undertone that he didn’t actually master on purpose.  She doesn’t expect much; she knows he is not good at this kind of talk. At least not through the phone.

(Or, at least, not with her on the receiving end.)

“Anyway, I’ll let you return to _Casablanca_ because I should really get some sleep. My alarm is set in three hours.” Sabrina announces around a mix of a yawn and an irritated huff.

Jughead frowns against the screen his eyes are glued on. “How did you know?”

“Because I’m not deaf?” she retorts, amused. “Plus, the weather app said it’s pouring back home and that’s your thing. Reminiscing your rainy movie nights back in Riverdale, right?”

Yeah, with _her_.

“I wish I was there with you.”

She isn’t the one behind the “her” that popped in his mind and he loathes himself for that. He drops his face and pinches the bridge of his nose, wishing the memories behind his shut eyes away and flinching as he changes the subject.

“Hey, be careful, okay?” he chokes around his words lightly but shakes his head and continues. “If the weather if this bad here, I can only imagine how much worse it’s in Sweden.” That’s not a lie; he cares about her, about her wellbeing, about her coming back home.

The only problem is that there is somebody else he never stopped caring about.

“Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine.” Sabrina reassures him, all love and sweetness, from the other side of the world. “Enjoy your movie and don’t fret about writing. If the second book doesn’t work, there’s definitely a career for you in stripping, babe.” She tries to brighten the perpetual sulky mood of his pessimistic self.

And just like that, he feels like the most awful man out of all the seven million on this planet. Because Sabrina Spellman, the edgy bohemian girl with the teal mermaid hair that one morning appeared next to him on a boring social anthropology lecture and had him intrigued and the professor tongue-tied with sharp questions from her equally sharp mind, is a brilliantly incredible girl that likes him of all people. Her only flaw is that she isn’t _the_ girl, and, despite how desperately Jughead is trying for her to be, deep down he knows that he is settling. Not that he would ever admit something like that to himself.

“Have you seen me dancing? I’m sure you’d be the only one to enjoy that.” He manages to sound somewhat aloof and his usual self, and that brings him the momentary peace he so needs.

“Well, I already have free discounts.” She playfully replies. “Goodnight, Jug.” He wishes that’s the end of the late night phone call. However, the click of the line disconnecting doesn’t come.

“I love you.” He hears instead.

Six years now she felt and said it plenty of times. He said it back a few, he never felt it once.

(Not even close to the irrevocably and unconditionally he once experienced.)

There’s a choke in his voice again, a bigger lump in his throat this time. “Yeah… Yeah, me too.” He manages to stutter and maybe he’s getting better at fooling both of them because Sabrina sends him a smooching kiss and promises to skype him tomorrow for their everyday cyber rendezvous before she hangs up.

As long as Jughead drops his phone next to him with a guilt-filled sigh, Ingrid Bergman is soulfully tearing up at the black and white screen of his laptop.

_“You're saying this only to make me go.”_

_“I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it.”_

_“No…”_

_“Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”_

_“But what about us?”_

_“We'll always have Paris. We didn't have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.”_

_“When I said I would never leave you…”_

_“And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.”_

_“Now, now… Here’s looking at you, kid.”_

He doesn’t care to see more of the movie. Its ending is like a broken record; he has seen it a million times before, he has _lived_ it. Her accepting her fate by following someone else – the better man – to their joined fairytale-like future as the other he in that love web of inevitable choices and heartbreak stays hidden in the sidelines, watches, lets his ultimate dream slip through his fingers that tremble around the white roll of toxic tobacco. At the end of the day, it all comes down to one thing:

He was the one to let her go.

Jughead closes the lid of his laptop with so much violent force that he won’t be surprised if his precious procession fails in function the next morning. He’s not angry at the situation; he stopped being angry at the unfairness of the world years ago, the night his teenage sister had found him in the lowest point he had vowed never to stoop, passed out on the kitchen floor of his take-out filled apartment, an empty bottle of red whiskey clenched inside a bloody fist. He is just angry at himself for indulging in that feeling of self-deprecation and endless what-ifs, for, instead of being grateful, he is still bitter with how his life turned out, for wanting more, for wanting things he can’t have, for wanting her –the her he is not allowed to want anymore.

A hand comes to mess his already untamed locks before it runs heavily down his face, as Jughead groans and clenches his eyes, head falling back against the couch in surrender. He feels mentally exhausted as he resumes his position of staring at the ceiling for a couple of minutes, frustrated that his habit of numbing his malfunctioning brain with fantasy worlds and beautiful cinematography failed to do the trick this particular autumn night. Maybe sleep can be his sedative, he thinks, and lazily rolls off his nest of pillows against the leather of the mahogany chesterfield couch, deciding on a soothing shower before slipping under the covers of a bed that carries a mysterious aura of rebellious cinnamon spice and seductive black tulips.

(It’s still a shock to his senses after so many years of vanilla and bubblegum.)

He is mid-way through his sluggish stroll down the hallway that leads to their spacious bathroom, Salem in tow with her fluffy tail blending in with his dark jeans as it curls and wiggles against his right pant, when there is a knock on the door, hesitant but firm at the same time. Both Jughead and his companion still at the sound, the temperamental pet meowing at the direction of the apartment’s front door, and he turns to stare too in utter loss. Neither him nor Sabrina have any relatives in New York and his relationship with the few friends he has acquired over the years never reached the level of closeness that would justify any of them dropping by unannounced or at such hour. They’ve never received any complaints from their neighbors before and, except for the occasional flickering of the pendant lights over the kitchen island that is probably due to the heavy rainstorm, there isn’t an emergency he is aware of.

Confusion knits his eyebrows together as he reluctantly drags his heavy feet and slouchy posture to the doorway. When the door opens, the air gets knocked out of his lungs and his mind shutters in tiny million pieces. The ultimate her of his subconscious is standing in front of him, all flesh and blood and perpetual rosy cheeks.

 _Betty Cooper_ ; the mortal beauty queen behind every word written by his fingers.

The fact that she came knocking at his door indicates that she knew who she was going to face on the other side. However, he is amazed to see the same glint of surprise in her meadow green eyes, the taken-aback look coloring the stunning features of her face, the tiny gasp that leaves her full lips at the sight of him standing in front of her after ten whole years of radio silence. He is sure he is the carbon copy of her at this very moment but he seems unable to collect himself, to think, to even breathe. His heart is beating way too fast and his mind is spinning way too crazy as she yet again succeeds in making his wildest fantasies a reality.

She has stayed untouched through time. At twenty-eight, she still looks as sixteen as ever. Jughead doesn’t know if that brings him comfort or unbelievable pain. Those eyes still look like two pools of innocence and clever wickedness all at once. Those lips still keep the meaning of his existence inside the abyss of their sinful taste. And as his own eyes capture hers with the intensity they always processed for her and her only, he comes to realize one thing; that the throne of his heart is the place she always held, holds and will hold forever.

He blinks a couple of times and it feels like the spell around them breaks as she swifts her weight from one foot to the other uneasily in front of him, centimeters out of his reach. Now, out of the suffocating void her unexpected presence threw him to drown, Jughead manages to actually see her, unbelievably beautiful even under the horrendous lighting of the corridor of his apartment building. Her halo-golden hair is loose over her shoulders, curly and damp and sticky against her cheeks, the tip of her nose is matching the redness of her cheeks, her stylish burgundy coat is littered with dark patches of water stains, wide on her rolled back shoulders, tiny and multiple where the pricey outerwear ends and the smooth skin of her legs begins. He tries his best for his eyes to not linger there, one of his many favorite features of her anatomy.

“Hey…” her voice startles him and he snaps his bewildered eyes back to her face, catching her holding her breath for a moment, testing something on her tongue, before she continues in a breathy whisper. “Hey, _Jughead_.”

He feels like being resurrected. For the first time after ten years, his name sounds right coming from a woman. A longing whine chokes deep in his chest, barely audible, but emotional enough to restart his motionless heart.

Saying it out loud does something to her too, almost as if she is surprised of her own voice, of the way it alters around the two syllables of the name she forgot how to utter. She grows anxious, she starts to ramble.

“I know this is out of the blue and, really, I’m so sorry to bother you but it’s absolute chaos out there! I’ve been trying to catch a taxi nearly an hour now and, apparently, all the phone lines also went down…” Betty is explaining quickly and in panic, her face a mask of despair, and Jughead is making an effort to keep up, too distracted by the sound of her voice, here, live and not in any sweet anamnesis buried deep in his brain. His eyes go to her hands as an instinct, a fancy, tiny black square that he believes serves as a bag in her right and her useless phone in her left, and he notices her fingers clenching but not breaking skin, something that brings a familiar wave of relief to spread inside is chest.

“I remembered the address from the present you’ve sent to Lizzie last year so I took a shot, I didn’t know if I’d find you here, if this was your permanent address or if you moved or if I’m interrupting something…” she pauses again, probably because of his lack of response or any gesture or, at least, a sign of acknowledgement that he is listening or that he cares enough to listen, biting nervously on her lip. His heart flatters at yet another habit of hers that he still recognizes.

(There is this weird notion in his head that all those familiar mannerisms of hers are enough to assure him that she is still _his_ Betty. Yes, Betty is his. But Jughead is not the man this ‘his’ refer to. He hasn’t been for years now, since he bought that one-way ticket out of Riverdale.)

“Listen, I know we haven’t talk for, like, a decade and the way we’ve ended things was bad and me coming here is probably the last thing you would want” a tiny huff of exasperation adorns her words but she is quick to collect herself “but if I could use your phone for just a minute and have Polly or Ethan come and pick me up…”

He stands up straighter against the ajar door, overwhelmed and taken aback by her request of invite inside a place he has fixed a life with a woman that’s not her. She mirrors his posture, but the elegant way she usually holds her presence turns defensive and her eyebrows knit at the shocked look he is sending her way. He finds the idea insane, not because he doesn’t want to help her, God no, but because he feels guilty letting her step into his reality as a mere visitor and not the protagonist he intended her to be. He feels like he is desecrating what they had, defiling her.

Betty misconstrues it as a sign of her being unwelcomed and unwanted.

“Alright, uh” she stumbles around her words, shaking her head and focusing her burning eyes to the gray carpet under her shoes “Just forget it. That was…” she looks up at him again, composed and very Alice Cooper appropriate, plastering a smile way too fake on her lips, pretending indifference even though the disappointment is evident through the blue undertones of her now stormy eyes. “That was a reckless thought, I’ll be out of your hair, I’m sorry, I just…” she is quick to turn around, determined not to make herself look more of a fool, mortified at her rare moment of impulse.

This snaps him out of his nirvana, mind, body, soul aching all at once with the first clicking step she takes away from him. He really needs to stop giving her more reasons to hate him.

“Come in.” Jughead blurts, urgent and alarmed, and she halts her movements abruptly, jumping at the sound of his voice, but keeps her back at him. “ _Betty_ …” her name on his lips sends a shockwave though his system, electricity tingling from his scalp to every bone and nerve ending in his body, and probably some sort of the same reaction happens to her because she turns around in reflex, wet locks flying like a gracious hurricane and a spark igniting now in the depths of her captivating orbs.

“Of course.” Jughead breathes sincerely, voice hoarse and unrecognizable even by him. In this lifetime – and in any other him and her existed or will exist – there isn’t a single thing that he would deny her, a single thing that he wouldn’t give her. His heart included.

He pushes the door wider and sidesteps awkwardly, head ducked and eyes fixing her with a sad welcome. There is a moment of hesitation on her part, an unsure step forward. And then she brushes past him with a side glance and a tiny nod as in ‘thank you’, bringing her world of vanilla in a place that is so deprived of it. When he closes the door softly behind him, his idea of the universe is the space of the four walls surrounding them.

Betty barely walks through the small foyer before she hesitates again, clutching her belongings against her chest and fidgeting with the material of her bag, nervous eyes darting all around the dimly-lit open plan living room and kitchen in cautious alarm. There is a faint taste of blood in her mouth, her down lip giving up under the constant abuse of her teeth, but she can’t help the code red level her anxiety has reached, dreading what she is about to face.

“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting something…” she apologizes again because she is aware of the impolite hour of her visit, aware that it’s a Saturday night, aware that there is a _she_ behind the elegant, urban modern décor and the spotless coziness the place offers even at first glance.

“No, it’s fine.” Jughead hurries to reassure her, shaking his head wildly. “Bree—” as quickly as the name flies off his mouth, his words die on his lips because her eyes snap to his and it hurts, it hurts the look she gives him as he confirms her thoughts. “I’m… I’m alone.” He manages to stutter, low in his throat and with his dark blue eyes averted elsewhere in shame, and probably she nods because a shadow of some kind of curt action dances on his profile.

She asks again for the house phone and he instructs her to a minimal cabinet next to the wide bookcase wall, her steps quick and hurried, as Betty orders herself not to get sidetracked from her mission by her curiosity towards the house he calls his home. Jughead goes to retrieve his own mobile phone from the couch it was carelessly abandoned, noticing that indeed there was no signal, but mostly to occupy himself with something saner and healthier than staring at her, imprinting her in his mind, feeding the empty phantom of her that haunts every corridor of his chaotic mind. Still, he is aware of every tiny thing she does; the way she breathes, the way she taps her shoe on the hardware floor, the way her slim fingers press the digits that would result in her, once again, disappearing.

 She is still dialing the number to her sister’s place in Upper West Side, when suddenly, somewhere in the depths of the horizon, a massive thunder erupts in full force with its loud earthshattering effect trembling against the thin glass of the wide windows and the lighting of the flickering lamps in the kitchen fades into nonexistence. Jughead was never really religious or superstitious or any kind of a believer, but, as the spacious room gets shallowed by darkness and her surprised gasp joins the hideous concert of piercing horns that erupts from the busy road at their feet, he firmly believes that whatever this higher power is, God, fate, karma, or any other abstract concept people use to justify the events in their lives, it will never fail in drawing them together like magnets or the perfectly matching pieces of a lifelong unfinished puzzle.

She, on the other hand, hisses a curse.

“Phone’s dead.” Betty announces, fed-up and irritated, perching the device again on its base – more forceful than necessary – to resume charging.

Jughead moves to the window next to the fireplace, peeking through the silken curtains. “Lampposts are out too.” He notes out loud and his inquisitive eyes scan the other apartment buildings around, all of them pitch black much like his. “It appears to be a power outage due to the weather.”

“Great.” He hears her huff again in bitter sarcasm. “Well, uh,” she starts walking and he turns swiftly to face her, mild panic hiding behind the crease between his eyebrows “thanks anyway for letting me try. I’ll see what I can do; maybe I can catch a bus or something.” She doesn’t know which bus can take her to her destination or if there is still any bus at this hour but she refuses to let him know that as she makes a beeline for the door.

“Hey, Betty, stay.” He blurts unexpectedly and latches forward as if to catch her but holds his horses when she glares back at him, warningly even, a hand at the doorknob. “I’d drive you to Polly’s but JB has my car for the weekend, she’s in Beacon with friends—”

She doesn’t let him finish, stubbornly shaking her head and standing up straighter, holding her ground.

“You don’t have to offer me any help. I’ll be fine.”

“It’s like a biblical catastrophe out there!” he replies incredulously, his tone almost high-pitched. “Taxis are full, buses will be delayed, you” he pauses, gesturing widely over her soaked form “you don’t even have an umbrella.” She squirms inside her oversized coat at his comment and she knows that he is right, but stubbornness is one of the many things she is good at. They both are.

“Stay.” Jughead sighs, almost pleads. “Until it dies out a little at least.”

His voice dances on that soft, velvety octave he used to address her with all those late nights they spent together in her childhood bedroom – two teens in love and blissfully invisible – and his eyes are radiant blue and tender under the rays of moonlight that hit his still incredibly handsome face. Betty can feel her will crumbling and that upsets her because she hates him, she really does, with all in her and all her passion.

(And she hates herself more for not meaning that. Because she _should_ hate him but she can’t. Not when he is in front of her, looking somewhat like the Jughead Jones she used to know.)

“Fine.” She finally admits around a defeated sigh. When she starts approaching him, cautious in her semi-blind state and unknown surroundings, she thinks she catches a tiny grin dancing for a nanosecond on his lips but she isn’t sure. Letting the thought slide, she fists the lapels of her coat. “Um, is there somewhere I can put this to dry?”

“Yeah, let me, I’ll throw it in the dryer.” Jughead looks like he is snapped out of his own reverie, as he instantly latches forward with arms outstretched, waiting for her to shrug out of the damp woolen garment. The darkness prevents him from having a clear view but he is pretty damn certain that she has something black and silk on, way too revealing on her shoulders and way too short on her legs. There is a lot of smooth skin shimmering with moondust and that’s definitely not the pastel pink Betty Cooper he remembered.

“Wow” the word comes out without him even registering his brain ordering his mouth to do so and it’s breathy and breathless enough for her to take a step back and for his eyes to widen at his inappropriate and embarrassing reaction. “I mean” he clears his throat to save some of the dignity he has left, draping her coat over the inside of his elbow and scanning her bare arms “aren’t you cold? Wait, I’ll…” he stumbles around his words lamely and, without finishing his sentence, hurries down the hallway, disappearing somewhere further inside the apartment.

He leaves her alone for a couple of minutes – or maybe ages or seconds – and as she slides her icy cold hands up her forearms, hugging herself, she is not sure if the chill she feels is from her scantily clad state or the dose of reality that hits her, hard. She doesn’t know anything about Jughead Jones anymore. He is just a mere face out of the many that appeared in her life and gradually faded, losing shape and _meaning_. It’s tragic, really, if she thinks about it; the man that some seconds ago was standing before her is _this_ man because of her but exactly what kind of man he is, well, she has no idea.

(For all she knows, he is the kind that failed her ten years ago.)

Her doe eyes take interest in her surroundings once again. The apartment seems spacious and rather upscale but not in a show-off way that would make anyone afraid of stepping inside with anything but freshly polished shoes. It’s homey and lived-in with tasteful furniture in that big city, urban style but with a few eccentric pieces and a lot of artistic details that easily let the visitor know that its occupants are young, well-read and cultured. Betty can definitely picture Jughead living in a place like this. In another life, she would definitely picture herself too.

Her attention is attracted by two framed photographs on the mantel of the marble fireplace that complement the rest of its minimal décor, consisting of a glass vase with fake white peonies, some leather-bound books and a miniature bust of the goddess Artemis. When she walks over for a closer look, she can’t help the teeny smile that appears on her lips at the sight of Jughead and the female version of him, who Betty assumes is Jellybean now at her early twenties, beaming at the camera while an equally happy FP is being playfully tackled by the two.  Its companion though, a photo of a couple cuddling lovingly at Fontana Di Trevi, succeeds in pulling violently on the mended strings of her heart. The man, she recognizes; she knows the unruly ebony waves, the sharp jawline, the sideways smile all too well. It’s the girl glued to his side, all long limbs and model-like physic, that Betty fails to recognize, fails to identify as anything like herself. Because her blonde hair appears softer and her blue eyes prettier and her red lipstick bolder but it doesn’t cross her mind that the girl looking back at her is just that; blonde, blue-eyed and with lips that scarlet colour of seduction.

She is still engaged in her silly game of spot the differences when she feels something warm hugging her bare shoulders. It’s a shirt and it’s plaid, to her surprise and her delight, and although the material is thicker and definitely more expensive than the ones she was used to against her bare skin, there’s still that scent of soap and sandalwood and freedom and a bit of danger, _so distinctly his_ , that instantly awakens her senses and puffs her chest with bittersweet nostalgia.

“She’s very pretty.” Betty blurts in a hushed whisper, eyes still examining the one that could have been her.

He is silent for a second, mimicking her posture of staring at the picture. “How did you know?”

“Fred let it slip a while ago, that you were thinking about moving in with some girl. I’m guessing he and your dad are on talking terms…” It’s not a question but Jughead nods in affirmation when their eyes meet tentatively in the dark.

“He used to call him sometimes; even paid him a couple of visits when he was in jail. I think they are on a regular phone call basis since he has been released, not that he lets me know.” Jughead informs her what the two men kept well-hidden all those years now, not wanting to pour salt into any sore wounds or fuel any kind of remaining fire between him and her.

She wants to smile at him and tell him that this is great, that she is really happy that his father is back in his, and what seems JB’s, life because she knows first-hand the hell he went through some years ago. She was there for all the agony-filled months of FP’s trial, she was there when that nerve-wrecking battle ended with a success, even if that was lessening his sentence by ten years with parole, she was there for that heartbreaking goodbye between father and son before FP was moved to state prison. But, even if his now peaceful demeanor spreads a warm sense of relief all the way to her cold limbs, those memories feel like a lifetime ago and her right to comfort him or sympathize with him or offer him the slightest of touches has long before been stripped of her.

She can’t help, however, the curiosity that creeps through the sensible parts of her brain.

“So, Bree?” she asks, wanting to confirm the name he accidentally heard from his lips earlier.

“Sabrina.” He once again nods, clearing his throat awkwardly. He goes in a blind search for his lighter, hating the nervous essence of the atmosphere around them and wanting to escape her piercing gaze. “She’s in Stockholm right now, doing research about medieval civilizations and the life of women in witchcraft-based communities.” He babbles incessantly while he busies himself with lighting some candles, the ones inside the fireplace and some more around them, making the room come alive along with the vision of the first girl he ever loved. “She’s an archaeologist and a social anthropologist.”

She wants to respond in some way again, tell him that she sounds interesting or so painfully his brains-and-beauty type, but she bites the inside of her cheek and stay silent, at the mercy of the tiny green monster associated with the most common deadly sin that’s poking at the insecurities she is still battling against. A small part of her is bitter too, that her own acceptance letter to Columbia was thrown in the trash in favor of a spot in Greendale’s community college, that her own dreams and ambitions stay locked in the _someday_ compartment of her brain. In a brief moment of weakness, she feels the bubble of her anxiety threaten to burst and her manicured nails graze the now faintly marked flesh of her palms, where fresh crescent wounds used to be common ages ago. She remembers the last time she indulged in that overwhelming power of the dark side of her brain – she is sure she will never forget it – and she refuses to let him be the reason she once again hurts herself. 

Jughead senses the shift in the air around them; he ducks his head away from her stormy, sullen gaze.

“Um, you want something to drink?” He offers in all his nervous glory. “Or eat maybe? I can wipe up something quick if you want.”

At that, Betty’s eyes become two huge balls of shock. “You cook?” she asks incredulously, a hint of amusement in her voice that immediately lightens the heavy mood. Jughead huffs a tiny chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck as he nods in awkward shyness. “Without starting a fire?” she rushes to make sure, her left eyebrow shooting up in typical Betty Cooper fashion.

“Yes!” he scoffs back like she has insulted him, mirth coloring his handsome features in a way that makes Betty feel sixteen again and giddy under his playful gaze.

“My God, I’ve never thought I’d live to see the day that you would manage not to burn even a single toast.” She teases him, as memories of him turning the kitchen of his dad’s trailer into a war zone full of culinary fatalities and her trying to save the day flash before her eyes.

“For your information, I have chicken curry with fried rice leftovers in the fridge.” Jughead announces with an arrogant tilt of his head upwards, before smirking in that mischievous way of his. Betty spares him a shocked grimace of appreciation.

Yet, that’s just another painful reminder that the appropriate etiquette of their current relationship is only one anymore; _strangers_. In a desperate need to stay connected, she asks.

“You wouldn’t happen to have, by any chance, ingredients for hot cocoa now, would you?” she shoots him a nostalgic smile because the dark, high on sugar beverage was something she naughtily indulged in his presence only, since she was a kid and such guilty pleasures were banned from the Cooper household.

He smiles back because, yes, he remembers. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

The ordeal is simple and imprinted in his brain; milk, cocoa powder, a pinch of salt, one tablespoon of sugar for her, two for him. As he whisks the ingredients and waits for the milk to turn hot, he steps so easily in his past shoes, in a pattern so normal and organic that almost feels real, as real as the warm scent of sweetness that now fills his nostrils and mingles with the lilac perfume and pedal smoke somewhere deep in his thoughts. Armed with two cups, he walks back to the living room where she waits for him, on the couch and wrapped in plaid, and it’s like time has stopped and ten years of his life got erased, only for him to be trapped in a dimension that offered them the happy ending they deserved.

The elegant diamond ring, iridescent under candlelight and accompanied by a silver band on her ring finger, shutters any make-believe world he so foolishly dared to create. He knew that it was there but its reminder, as she accepts the cup he offers her with a smiley “thanks”, risks infecting the stitches of his broken heart.

“So…” he draws out with heart heavy and aching, as he takes a seat next to her, a small distance lingering awkwardly between them. “I guess you’re back from the gallery?”

“Yeah.” Betty all but breathes, splaying her fingers on the porcelain she is holding to warm them. When she continues, her tone hides so much excitement and love and joy, the typical Betty Cooper way of supporting everyone she loves. “The show was such a success, Polly is elated. So is Ethan. Well, she of course was nervous, as usual, but the turnout was amazing. I’m so proud of her; her eye for detail never ceases to amaze me every time.” The genuine smile around the words of praise for her sister fades into a defeated pout, whispered words tentatively accompanying it. “Too bad you couldn’t be there.”

His composure stays unfazed, betraying nothing of his lie, although he knows she has already caught him into it, even before turning up on his door. He lets his lips curl into a small grin, genuinely happy too about Polly’s success in the photography world.

“I’ll drop by the studio and congratulate her.” Jughead promises with an honest nod, upholding the tradition he religiously follows after any of her showcases that he of course is invited but, all too suddenly, he always can’t attend. “How come you’re here…” he hesitates, examining the inside of his mug “alone?”

The thudding of his heart increases tenfold.

“Mom and dad are with.” The answer supplies his lungs with much-needed oxygen. It’s naïve and ridiculous, he knows that, but he manages to soothe his raging brain with this _out of sight, out of mind_ way that he always used to deal with his problems. “Mom is flying back tomorrow. You know, The Register is keeping her busy still. Dad and I will stay for a couple of days to catch up. I haven’t seen him since the Easter holidays. We spent summer in” she halts her rambling abruptly, as if she now understands the weight of her words, raising her cup to murmur around the fancy china “Chicago.”

Jughead doesn’t let the information restart his nervous breakdown. He tries to focus on the positive things – her parents finally being civilized after years of being divorced, her spending the quality time she always craved with her father, after he had moved to Ohio for a new start – but his mind refuses to cooperate and thrives in torturing him, with a certain picture of joyous laughter and a perfect family on a homey backyard under the warm Chicago sun. He masks his inner struggle with a nod.

“How’s The Register treating you?” quickly, he attempts a change in subject. Truth be told, he is extremely interested in what urged her to the direction of accepting a joined work environment with her control-freak of a mother. Then again, Riverdale isn’t exactly known for its rich assortment of job opportunities, let along regarding the field of Opinion Journalism.

Betty momentarily stays stunned at him being even the slightest aware of anything that goes on in her life but she guesses Fred is not the only one without a filter in his mouth; his best friend is just as good.

She quickly finds her former self and gives in the small talk he is attempting. “Same as always; long hours, a bitching mom and never enough coffee on the damn machine!” Her giggle is lighthearted and Jughead catches his own heart skip a beat at the sound, a foreign reaction that sends a shiver down his spine. He missed her laugh, he missed her scrunched nose, he missed her soft cheekbones that glowed under the radiance of her smile.

He missed _her_ so damn much.

“Jokes aside, it’s not bad at all. I’m kinda used to it at this point. And mom is fairly okay too.” She admits in a small voice, too engrossed in the abstract shapes of dry cocoa that decorate the inside of her half-full cup. She turns to look at him suddenly, a veil of accepted defeat ghosting over her forced smile. “She offered me to take on the business, you know. I think I’m gonna take it.”

He isn’t sure if he should be congratulating her for the new course in her career. It’s a huge deal, calling the shots in the town’s historic and love-to-hate newsletter, that newsletter also being the prideful possession of Riverdale’s very own first family, and although he doubts she’d be anything but remarkable in that position, he also doubts that this is something she truly wants. Late night talks come to his mind, hushed whispers over calligraphic notes and neat piles of flash cards, and dreams, dreams about college, apartments, internships, ambitions, The Boston Globe, an Edgar Allan Poe Award.

She always wanted to leave her mark in this world, to write things that mattered, that changed lives. Riverdale never left enough space for her to spread her wings.

“But what about Boston? I thought that was your dream.” The emptiness in her otherwise soulful eyes gives him the right to wonder.

She breathes a small, sad laugh. “Well, some dreams are bound to stay just dreams.”

The statement holds so much raw truth that Jughead can feel the impact of her words in his bones, morphing his previous nostalgic memory into a never-ending darkness that crumples those silhouettes of the people they used to be, strangles them and violently swallows them whole. Part of his own wishful thinking has come true; he studied at NYU, he made a life in the city, his first book created a sensation amongst the mystery fiction lovers. He moved on but without her and that’s the dream of his – his biggest one – that he will never get the chance to fulfill.

Silence spreads between them and he uses it as an excuse to steal a glance at her and then one more and one more and one more, until he is fully examining her under the soft tint of the burning candles, storing her image in the part of his brain that’s labelled _regrets & heartache_. Eighteen-year-old Betty, the Betty he heartlessly left behind, is still there but this ten-years-later version of her is not a girl trapped in pastel and knit but a stunning woman, for all intents and purposes. Her hair is not restrained by her always impeccable ponytail but cascades free and longer down her back, styled in a Brigitte Bardot haircut that succeeds in perfectly framing her flawless face even now, despite the damp condition of her curly locks. There are firmer curves under the black silk of what Jughead recently came to recognize as a slip on dress, rounder, more defined, definitely mouthwatering. The barely-there spaghetti straps and the deep v-cut reveal some kind of elegant black lace that’s there for styling purposes and coverage of course, but also to offer an exciting play of hide and seek between alluring see-through designs and skin, and the burgundy strapped pumps are an extra touch of seduction on her miles-long legs. She is noticeably slimmer than she used to be, deviously curved in all the right places and what appears to be fit in all the others, and despite the fact that a tiny part of him worries if she is taking care of herself, the majority of his testosterone dominated self can’t deny how much more irresistible she has gotten over the years.

And she is sitting next to him with a plaid shirt of his wrapped around her delicate figure and it almost feels like nothing has changed.

_Almost._

“What about…?” The question falls from his lips abruptly and fades in the exact way, and he knows that his stare is cold and his jaw stiff by the way her nails graze the polished material of her cup when she turns to size him up with a glare.

“Archie?” she challenges and a rush of boiling blood shocks his nervous system at the mention of his name from her lips. “He’s…” there’s a moment of hesitation, as if she’s trying to find the right word or think about the answer or not let on too much “ _good_.”

It’s vague and laconic, the answer she settles for, but he most certainly isn’t going to engage himself in that kind of talk. He may be a martyr but he is not a masochist.

Then again, having her empty silhouette haunting his dreams is a tad masochistic.

“He couldn’t come because there were some issues to be dealt with at school…” she’s babbly once again and the emphasis she adds on the school part sounds kind of forced in his ears but he doesn’t have the chance to interrupt because she is talking miles per minute, as if she is trying to fit ten years into a single second, as if she wants to inform him about every single aspect of a reality he missed. “Plus, he and the major just got a construction permit about building a public music hall so they, along with Fred, are meeting with architects and discussing sketches and prices so he is very in too deep right now. But he insisted on me having this personal retreat.” She smiles, tiny but grateful.

Yeah, the _great_ Archibald Andrews; the exceptional music teacher, the heart of the community, the golden example of a husband.

“That’s good.” Jughead forces around the bitter lump in his throat. His eyes stay cold at the emptiness in front of him, the kaleidoscope of colors around the flame of a candle offering a numbing sensation he so badly seeks.

Silence again. Awkward and hostile. Hiding things that would disturb the perfect ordeal of their small, miserable lives.

“Veronica got engaged too, huh?” her voice trembles in her attempt to ease the tension around them, abandoning her now cold drink on the coffee table with a louder _clink_ than necessary, courtesy of her shaky hands. “Instagram post with a million likes, very her. Governor’s son, also very her.” Betty chuckles lightly, an awkward essence to the sound.

(A lifetime ago, she was promised a designer gown and the Maid of Honor title for the happiest day in Veronica Lodge’s extravagant life. Now, she relied on an impersonal social medium to find out about a talk-of-the-town wedding to which she won’t even be invited.)

“Did you expect anything less?” Jughead sardonically replies and Betty is surprised at the hint of a smirk that dances on his lips. “Robert is a great guy though; he looks at her like she’s hung the moon. And they look good together, in that intimidating we-shower-in-money way.” He jokes like he’s seen them, like he _knows_ them, and Betty realizes that he indeed does, that Veronica Lodge, the person he would have actively shunned – his words, not hers – so many years ago, is now not just a casual acquaintance of his forgotten past but enough of a friend so for him to be included in that exclusive circle of people that know the human side of the wealthy heiress.

Betty gets a strange feeling of vertigo, in which her insides turn into thin air and her heart slides to the pit of her stomach. She is well-accustomed to this feeling of disappointment.

“Listen, Betty, if I knew you were here, I’d…” He is not sure what he is trying to say. That he’d call her? He wouldn’t. That he would hit her up for a coffee date and some catching up? He most certainly wouldn’t do that either. But for some reason, he wants to say it, he wants to soak in the illusion of a world where he could share some minutes of her time without threatening to disturb the ugly skeletons in both their closets.

“You wouldn’t.” Like she is reading his thoughts, she lets out with a defeated sigh. “Let’s be honest, Jughead.” She challenges him with the most painstakingly serious expression he’s ever seen her sporting. Her sad eyes crease at the corners and she looks so tired, older, so much like the devastated Alice Cooper he once witnessed shredding her polished façade and welcoming her bare human nature. “You wouldn’t call me or text me or simply care to ask about me. You didn’t even come tonight or any other night you knew I was visiting.”

Her words sting but, yes, that’s the ugly truth. At this point, he is a master in avoidance. He has cut ties with anything Betty, anything Riverdale and anything in between. His limited contact with Polly is only because he doesn’t want the miniature of her with a shock of red hair to be added to the long list of people disappointed by Jughead Jones. Things might have turned out to be worse than a nightmare between him and Betty but he really didn’t thrive to become a shitty godparent to Lizzie. So he sends presents and love through cards and books and the occasional phone call but he hasn’t set foot to any birthday party or school play or rare Sunday barbeque that he is more than welcomed.

Because she is always there. And the ring on her finger matches the one on the hand of another man.

“You wouldn’t want me there. And we both know the reason.” Jughead bitterly replies, with the same level of mental exhaustion in his voice. “Plus, with work and writing and my editor breathing down my neck my time is pretty limited.” He adds his calculated excuse, not in the mood for conflict.

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” She blurts but it’s in such a fake dismissive manner that he makes him turn and stare at her in confusion. “It’s totally you, always you. I mean you are the one perpetually with no time to spare or neck deep in problems and hardships and we just don’t get it because everything is perfect in our worlds, right?” she scoffs a laugh deprived of any humor.

Jughead’s eyes narrow, his body stiffens and suddenly the distance that separates them on the couch feels like oceans, oceans that he has no choice but to drown in. 

“I really didn’t expect irony from you.” He spits as the iron castle walls of his defenses start creeping up to secure the little sanity he has left. He feels disappointed at her tone; he thought she of all people understood him the most. 

“Irony?” Betty huffs in disbelief, green fire smouldering in the depths of her irises. “Well, you broke up with me without even telling me. _That’s_ irony in my books.” She bites back with venom and he instantly feels ashamed, smaller in size and at the verge of being sick.

He hangs his head low and examine the contains of his mug.

“I had my reasons.” His murmur barely disrupts the silence of the ice cold room around them and he wishes to be destroyed, struck by lightning or drown by the still raging storm.

_What’s the use of a functioning body when his heart is once again bleeding at her feet?_

“Oh yeah, right… Like protecting me from the Serpents or that greater evil that came with their territory.” She has memorized it by now, the manifesto of his sacrifice and departure, and she rolls it around her tongue like an over-chewed bubblegum that lost any of its appeal.

It’s the breaking point. 

“I was protecting you from me!” Jughead finally snaps, voice raising a harsh octave. “From waking up one day and hating me for the person you’d become.”

She looks at him dead in the eye, cold and hostile. He almost doesn’t recognize her. “And, please, enlighten me; when exactly did I ask for protection? Or for you making decisions for myself?” she demands, the blood pumping viciously inside her veins at the unfairness, at his attempt to play the part of the bleeding Romeo once again.

She is no Juliet, despite his efforts to make her one. And she certainly wasn’t, isn’t and won’t ever be in need of any balcony-climbing hero.

“You don’t understand…” he chuckles sharply, head shaking at how ungrateful he thinks she’s acting. He stands up distancing himself, needing air to breathe.

“No, _you_ don’t understand!” Betty retorts, an accusatory undertone in the pronoun, as she also springs to her feet. “You don’t understand how pathetic I felt for knocking at your door and pleading you to answer for two days straight, losing my mind and thinking that something horrible has happened to you. How stupid I felt when one of them came to tell me that you fled town.” Her voice, although high-pitched and angry, is trembling around a choke that Jughead can feel piercing through the thick armor he has built all those years away from her. “I collapsed on your doorstep and if it wasn’t for Archie, the one whose name you can’t even say anymore, I would still be there mourning for somebody that didn’t have the guts to even make up an excuse and say it to my face!” Volume of voice escalating gradually until it reaches code red territory, as well as her boiling anger, she stands her ground firmly against the turbulent sea blue of his now dark eyes.

She struck a chord. His chest is now heaving with blinding rage.

“So, I’m the coward?” Jughead dares her to answer, the words equal of a roar and his stare an ominous sign of madness.

“Of course you are.” She doesn’t hesitate even for a heartbeat.

He lets his eyes roll at the back of his skull and pinches the bridge of his nose, scoffing darkly and easing his breaths, minutes before lashing out. When he opens his eyes again, she is still there across him fuming but, now, he is too. “And what do you call yourself, huh?” he snaps maliciously to her face. “A year later you married him, Betty! So don’t try to bullshit me with lies about you drowning in so called sorrow and despair!” His jaw clenches and he stands tall in his full height, determined not to show the hurt in his eyes or the bandages and plasters of his massacred heart.

“Don’t you dare!” Betty narrows her stone cold eyes at him, now covered in glossy sheen. “You didn’t even show your face—” she starts harshly but she is cut off.

“Oh, you wanted me there!” Jughead mocks in pretentious amusement, a great hand gesture complementing his sarcasm. “To do what? Witness not being good enough once again? Seeing you toast to my stupidity and laugh at my face along with the one you wanted to be with all along?” The thought is obscure and he doesn’t believe that she has the audacity to look him in the eye after everything she did.

“Oh my God, if I hear this one more time!”  she groans, hands flying over her head in frustration before a single one is running through her hair and her tongue comes to lick the bitterness on her lips.

“It’s the truth, Betty! It was always Archie for you.” Jughead repeats the mantra responsible for his lifetime of insecurities and everything that came their way because of it. “And maybe you liked me or I’ve proven to be a decent enough rebound but I never came first to your affections, so what did you expect me to do?” he cleverly demands, certain that there is nothing more impossible in this world than Betty Cooper ending up with the weird kid from the trailer park.

White picket fence wasn’t his style.

“I wanted you to fight for me! To come and give me a reason not to do it! Because, brand news, you were always the first choice!” It comes out as a strangled scream at the top of her lungs, a desperate plea for him to catch her before drowning. “You want me to say that I settled?” she whines around a heartbreaking choke, the tide of the waterfalls in her eyes rising but never spilling. “There, you have it; I settled for the second best.” Betty confesses with a big sad exhale, the effect of her words causing him to take a step back, blinking rapidly and trying to wrap his mind around the foreign words. “That’s what he is and will be because you showed me what having _the best_ really means.” He turns his back at her, eyes closing and face a mask of sorrow as his fingers come up to pull at the neckline of his sweater. He feels suffocated into his own skin and he is panicking, loathing the disruption of his blissfully numb life and cursing his heart for pulsing wildly with something close to _hope_.

“Did I boost up your ego now? Are you validated enough? Happy to learn that you made us both miserable?” Her harsh words come from behind him and his down lip trembles, itching to bite her back with equally venomous words.

“You had a choice. Nobody forced you into a dress or a quaint little wedding.” he simply states, turning his face for a moment to spare her a side glance full of resentment.

“Yeah, _my choice_ …” Betty murmurs, as if she is trying to make herself believe that it was indeed her choice, that she had a choice to begin with. “You know, I don’t remember much of that day.” Voice emotionless and eyes vacant against the trembling flames of the candles inside of the fireplace, she hugs herself in an attempt to keep her broken pieces together, the plaid shirt on her shoulders for the first time feeling foreign to the touch. “Only that my hands were wrecked, that blood was staining white silk and I felt terrified. I had the worst panic attack of my life that day.” Her mind is filled with memories of massacred palms and salty tears and the pain of a sapphire hairpin on fresh curls and a room that’s spinning and a groom with fiery hair instead of ebony locks at the end of a rose petal path and she wants to scream, wail, like everything is happening all over again. “I was crying violently and heaving for oxygen and I knew that my mind was slipping but I couldn’t do anything to stop. I was at the verge of seriously hurting my own myself and nobody could help me.”

The confession causes him physical pain, in his head, his body, deep in his chest. He doesn’t want to paint the picture she is describing but his mind does, with the most depressing colors, and he wants so bad to turn around and envelope her in his arms, hold her tightly until she forgets and her scars disappear. There’s this other part of him though, the one that doesn’t remember much of that dreadful day either, but only a blur of pits and pieces of reality behind cigarette smoke and liquor bottles, that orders him to resist the temptation.

Eventually, he doesn’t move an inch.

“So Archie came” she sniffs lightly and goes on with her depressing monologue “slid down the other side of the door of the bathroom I was locked in, and said to me “I don’t except you to forget him or love me the way you love him. But I’m here and I want you for myself and, if you choose me, you will make me the happiest man on the planet.” And I thought,” she chuckled through a teary inhale “one out of three, that’s good, one of us has the chance to be happy. So I did the right thing; I stayed by my husband.”

The sound of his title out of her lips, _her husband_ , turns him into a lifeless statue once again. He sniffs too, blinks a couple of times to vanish any sign of weakness and turns to face her.

“Great, you want me to congratulate you or something?” he addresses her with that apathy and caustic tone that he always used as a weapon to drive everyone away.

Betty shakes her head in disbelief, pity flooding her eyes as she stares him down. “You know what? That was so wrong, me coming here, telling you all that when clearly you’re still wrapped up in your own head, your own world, where everything revolves around Jughead Jones and his long line of miseries—” she is rambling away in exasperation, getting riled up again by his inability to care for anyone else apart from his petty little self and she succeeds in getting him started again too, like two matches igniting and catching on fire.

“Joke around all you want, as if—”

“Here we go again, God, I’m out—”

“Yeah, run back to him and be that little Shepford wife you always wanted.”

She is barely to the door when her will snaps at the sound of the well-calculated insult and she turns abruptly to shout at the top of her lungs. “You left! You understand that? You packed up your things and _vanished_!” Her voice echoes around the living room in hatred and he is taken aback, one of the rare times he watches Betty screaming at somebody, let alone him. “And now you have the nerve to pretend like you know what kind of life we are leading?” she questions incredulously, narrowing her eyes menacingly. “You don’t know if I’m good with him or if he’s good with me! If he likes my cooking or if I can’t stand his cologne! You don’t know if we have hardships or, or, good times or bad times, you don’t know anything about us anymore!” her voice breaks at the crescendo of her piercing outburst and a lone tear floats down her cheek only for her to wipe it aggressively, having vowed to herself that she would never cry in front of him again. Jughead is just staring at her, perplexed, angry, guilty, his posture stiff in defense.

“I had two miscarriages, Jughead. Two!” His eyes soften at that and there is a hard punch to his gut because of the distressing cloud that shadows her face. It’s an oxymoron, he thinks; there was no other woman on the planet more suitable to become a mother apart from the one standing strong in front of him. “And I know that’s not the plan right now,” this statement surprises him as well as the rest of her incessant rambling “and that we have other priorities and I’m fine, really, _I_ _don’t_ _want kids_ ” she states stubbornly, like the idea alone is the furthest thing of an option she would like to consider “but it still hurt. And I had no one to talk to! Because you were that person for me, my person.” She is sobbing now with no tears left to spare but in a wailing tone that makes him ache and feel the smallest man on this earth, a pained frown deepening between his knitted eyebrows. “Because before all and above all, we were best friends! And I miss you!” Betty gasps tearfully, as if searching for air and a way to breathe again. “Archie misses you; he _needs_ his best friend! And you don’t even care!”

The sentence trembles out of her quivering lips and the disappointment that succeeds in passing along causes him to hang his head low in shame, fingers flexing and unflexing in fists on his sides. He is angry at her, angry at himself, angry that he is not strong enough to shred her off her bloodstream. He will never be.

“I never stopped caring…” Jughead manages to utter in the faintest of whispers.

“You did!” Betty is quick to correct him. “I knew a Jughead that cared but I haven’t seen him in ten years. When was the last time you picked up the phone and called us or sent a text or asked about us? It’s like we don’t exist for you!”

The heartbreaking sob that rips through her tiny form threatens the glass on the windows and pierces his ringing ears, making him flinch at the sound and its impact on his heart. Two single tears run stubbornly down her heated cheeks and she murmurs a frustrated “God!” at betraying her promise of keeping an iron exterior in front of him. She brushes her fingers against her cheeks forcefully to vanish any dampness on her skin, swallows and, after a heartbeat, she continues, voice defeated and raspy.

“You know, everyone was afraid that you’d turn out to be like your father and, God, I wish you had.” Betty lets him know sadly, catching his sullen eyes. “But this version of you? Leaving people behind, erasing them from your life?” she shakes her head and bites her lip before releasing it to send a deadly bullet right through his chest. “Congratulations, Jughead. You are _exactly_ like your mother.”

His mind becomes a dark mass of excruciating pain and all he sees is red. His limbs urge him to lash forward and with a loud violent thud she is pinned against the wall, a gasp trembling through her slack lips.

“Shut up.” Jughead growls lowly in his throat, holding her between the cold concrete and his hard chest firmly by her jaw, his anger a boiling volcano threating to erupt like a tickling bomb. Her words press like a flaming iron on his wounds over and over and over again and it burns, _it drives him mad_.

He makes the mistake to look into her eyes that are trained fearlessly on his, two pools of green full of wicked promises, and the Betty Cooper spell he is under takes affect again, puffs his chest with the overwhelming need to swallow her whole, bruise her, inhale her. She is not afraid of him but he feels her shiver against his body, familiar soft curves making him remember, and the beast inside him wakes up after ten years of hibernation, demanding to be fed.

In a bold, irresponsible move, he kisses her; forcefully and fiercely, exhaling a breath of frustration as his lips strangle her sharp cry at the contact. He is hurt and he wants to hurt her too, to get under her skin like she did and make her scream his name, until there is no air left in her lungs and no more words of poison on her bruised lips.

All too quickly the sensation is lost. He stumbles backwards, shoved by the shocking power of two delicate hands, the action followed by the sharp _thwack_ of flesh hitting flesh and a paralyzing sting on his left cheek that knocks violently his face to the side.  His eyes blink down at the hardware floor and his jaw flexes painfully, her hand now shooting up to her mouth to muffle her deranged sob at what she just did, her palm matching the growing red on his cheekbone.

His pride, heart and ego crumble to the floor, slaughtered by her own bare hands.

Jughead sucks in a breath and raises his head to face her. His hair is an unruly mess with that single wave poking the bridge of is nose, playing peek-a-boo with his hurtful baby blues that look at her with a mix of anger, pain, regret, longing, _lust_. Betty is staring right back at him, reaching his soul, scratching on old wounds and creating others. Her eyes sparkle with something wicked, her breaths are labored, her cheeks flustered, his shirt hanging off her right shoulder as a result of their physical struggle. He is a sight to behold, he thinks, all disheveled and worked up, and his insides tingle because of the effect he still has on her, of the passion that oozes through her pores and fuels his own obscene thoughts of defiling her in the most unladylike positions.

Suddenly, he is the one to be pushed back against the wall, fingers fisting the front of his sweater and manicured nails digging hard on his pecs. His head collides with the elegant wallpaper as her tongue sneaks into his mouth for a lewd invasion, sliding against his with a sensuality and a wet sound that almost make his knees go weak and he covers her cheeks and neck with his large palms, fingertips burying under blonde tresses, to hold her mouth captive forever.

It’s a kiss full of tongues, teeth and filthy sounds that delivers a shot of high adrenaline through their veins. It’s a kiss they remember.

He groans when he feels her urgently tugging at his grey sweater, sliding her tiny hands under it and over the hard planes of muscle on his torso. She delivers a hard caress from the waistband of his jeans to his thorax, as if she wants to remind herself of every dimple and every scar of his body, bringing the woolen material along before she momentarily disconnects their already swollen lips to yank it off him and throw it recklessly to the floor. Her eyes stay focused on his, hooded and clouded with lust, and the flat of her tongue draws a straight line of saliva from the center of his chest all the way up to his jaw, before claiming his sinful mouth again. He growls deep in his chest and fists the curls at the end of her neck, angling her head in frenzy, messing her hair, opening her lips wider with his thirsty ones, getting drunk with the taste of her.

Her nails pierce his ribs as she anchors herself on his body and one of her killer legs slides up to rest bended against his hip. “You belong to me.” Her wet lips dance filthily over his panting ones, the waves of her body against his tight and desperate. She grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks hard, he drops a large hand to the thigh that keeps him trapped against the wall and squeezes harshly, fingers bruising the curve of her firm ass under her dress. He thrusts upwards against her, curt and forcefully, and he watches as she loses train of thought for a moment, letting a silent scream before clawing his scalp again.

“You are mine.” Betty growls possessively, teeth biting and tagging his down lip so hard that he groans back in pain and ultimate arousal. The black silk is getting wrinkled between them and she’s open and hot against the front of his jeans and he starts to feel dizzy, overwhelmed, mad with desire. “Even when you fuck her, it’s me the one that makes you come _every damn time_.”

A painful roar rips through his chest and the dominate side of him compels him to slam her against the opposite wall. Yes, she is the one starring in his every wet dream, she is the one begging for his come behind his shut eyelids seconds before reaching his high inside another woman, she is the one accompanying him in the shower when that woman fails to make him see stars. He is ashamed of himself, ashamed of his sick mind, his sick body, that can’t resist her, that craves her with all his everything, that right now wants her like no day has passed with him not being inside of her.

The pain on her backside makes her yelp and drip into her underwear, a small painting crumbles to the floor from the impact of two bodies trying to define gravity, but neither of them cares or registers their surroundings as Jughead claims her lips again so aggressively that even her chocked gasp can’t escape the urgency of his mouth. It’s the epitome of frenzy; lips widening and sucking, tongues twirling in sinful patterns, teeth sinking on flesh and drawing blood. He grounds himself firmer against her center, hipbones bruising hipbones, as her leg is now curled around his hip, and pulls back from her lips to lick a hot trail from one collarbone to the other. Betty’s head drops back on the wall with a thud as she heaves for oxygen, moaning long and desperate when he starts biting the skin of her neck like he hates her or wants to mark her as his forever.

In a moment of blinding lust, Jughead’s hands find the V-neck of her dress and tug hard, the material giving out under his demanding fingers. The rip forces a gasping cry out of Betty’s swollen lips and her back arches to his face, a perfect bow offering two globes decorated with the skimpiest of lace right to his thirsty mouth. He licks the pushed up curves heavily, bony fingers splayed at the underside of her breasts to keep her arched against him as his thumbs brush over the rosy patch of perky skin that’s visible under her lace-only bra. She is moaning and whimpering, just her head resting back on the wall and one leg firmly on the ground to support her weight, cradling Jughead’s head against her chest and trying to ease the fire between her legs with urgent rolls of her hips against his thrusting ones.

He bounces his head back to shake his unruly hair out of the way and his eyes take in the sight of her; his plaid shirt dangled at her elbows, her black dress torn in the middle up until her navel, its hem wrinkled and barely covering her tiny excuse of underwear. There is black lace everywhere, see-through and alluring, and that’s his undoing. She is the sluttiest he’s ever seen her and he loses his mind at the thought that all this filthy hidden treasure wasn’t supposed to be for him.

With a groan Jughead lashes forward, closing a peaked nipple in his mouth through the fabric and sucks vigorously. Betty jumps at the sudden sensation and grips his hair with a deep sigh as he moans around the sensitive nerve-ending. His teeth trap the thin material of her bra cup and tug until her breast jiggles free and he is biting actual flesh, twirling the flat of his tongue to soothe the abused nipple before letting it go with a sexy pop.

Betty can’t resist him anymore. He grabs the back of his neck and collides their lips together for a kiss that drips with desire and longing, their desperate panting and sharp moans creating the dirty soundtrack to their forbidden union. In a haste, Jughead fumbles with the button of his jeans and then the zipper, pulling himself free from his pants and boxers. Her full lips suck wetly on his tongue and her nails claw his shoulder blades and he firmly grabs her hips, groaning against her mouth and finding her thong, pulling it to the side.

In one sharp movement, he is buried inside her to the hilt.

A guttural gasp leaves Betty’s lips and mingles with his strangled moan, their eyes connecting in utter sexual hazy and mind-blowing nirvana. The stretch is harsh, he can see it in the crease between her knitted eyebrows, and her body shakes violently from the unexpected action but he can’t stop and, most importantly, she doesn’t want him to stop, so he pulls back all the way out and thrusts quicker this time, knocking her body further against the wall and tasting her cries against his open lips. He is so big inside her, so thick and hard, that it shocks her whole system, makes her lose every ounce of sanity and connection to the world. He deliriously murmurs how tight she is against her gasping lips and punctuates the statement with a thrust that makes her eyes roll at the back of her skull and force her nails on his shoulders to anchor herself. She hasn’t felt him inside her ten years now, she hasn’t felt anyone as intense or good or raw as him, and she craves more, she craves him to destroy her from inside out.

“Tell me you love me.” Jughead demands in a haze, dark eyes locked with hers, fingers bruising the skin of her hipbones, hard cock hitting that spot inside of her that he only knows how to reach with curt, forceful moves. “Say it.” He all but growls with a loud punch to the wall next to her face, shaking her out of her delirious state and making her eyes wide pools of desire. “Even only for tonight.” He pleads in a small, broken voice, his hand on the wall coming to fist her messy locks and angle her head up, joining their foreheads and boring his hurt eyes into hers.

“I love you.” Betty confesses in a breathy sob, losing track of her own mind as he starts pistoling inside of her quicker and harder at the sound of those words addressed to him, after years of not having heard them from her mouth. Her head rolls back in pleasure and then the three-word sentence becomes a sensual mantra that blurts from her lips with every on-point flick of his hips against hers.

Everything is starting to become too much, from the way her body pulses and responds against his, the way she is taking him in, the quivering of her tiny muscles, the way he feels around his cock, tight like a vice, impossibly wet and made for him, a feeling that lately he has started to believe that he made up in his wildest fantasies, that _she never existed_. But now she is here, perched up against a wall, absolutely flustered and ravished, filling silence and space with her best porn star moans and drenching his thighs with how desperately she wants him. This scene is the only spectacle of his new miserable life.

He can feel her walls spasming around him and her body stiffen, her chest heaving with deeper moans and he wants to hear his name leave her lips in absolute sexual agony, like way back on his father's trailer where she always used to unravel in the most erotic and vocal ways. He angles his hips and quickens his pace and she starts shivering wildly, the heel of her pump against his ass piecing his skin and urging him deeper and deeper with every thrust. She is so slippery and tight, his throbbing cock fighting against the closing of her walls and he drops his head on her shoulder, nibbling on her collarbone and sliding his hand down to where they are connected.

She starts moaning louder, creating red marks with her nails on every each of his skin, desperately begging him to make her come. A heartbeat before she is there, she pulls his head from her shoulder and connects their eyes until her open lips exhale the most erotic high-pitch sigh he ever heard in his life, Jughead watching the color of her irises turn all shades of green while she feverishly bounces against his cock, coaxing his own undoing.

“Fuck.” Is all he can utter when he comes, mesmerized by the sight and overstimulated by the warmth and tightness around him, as Betty’s nails pierce his ass, desperately holding him inside her while both of them moan at the feeling of him pouring every ounce of him inside her still quivering walls.

Jughead doesn’t know how much time they stay like that, trying to calm down their heartbeats and find their footing back in the real world. What he does register is the chilling sensation of her wedding band against the skin of his bicep and like a well-timed bomb every bit of magic gets destroyed around them. He is a disappointment once again, knowing only how to hurt people and deprive them of any good and sane and normal in their lives. He feels her stiffen against him too, breaking through the veil of whichever spell brought them to sin, but he doesn’t dare reach her eyes as his defenses rise up again and his chronic self-impaled guilt threatens to kick start another one of his infamous nervous breakdowns. He pulls back from her sated body hastily, flinching at the evidence of him he drags along the inside of her thigh and at the loss of contact and then turns his back at her to pull up his boxers and button his jeans. The don’t say anything; he goes in search for his packet of Marlboro.

Shirtless before the open window with the white roll of tobacco hanging shakily from his lips, Jughead welcomes the taste of his other vice inside his system and the cold fogy atmosphere of New York after a storm. He can hear the sound of her heels behind him as she probably rights her own appearance too and gathers her stuff and he wants to say something, ask her if she is okay or drop to his knees and plead her not to leave him. But he can’t bring himself to utter any words, the writer in him forgetting every syllable and every letter structure he had ever used.

Just before she reaches the door, he turns to look at her, a silent “I’m sorry” written with soft blue paint in the depths of his eyes. Betty just stares, vacant and resentful, her fist clenching around her dress that now is just a piece of black silk inside her hand, his shirt sloppily buttoned all the way up to the mauve trails of his teeth against her neck to serve as a dress and her coat long forgotten in his bathroom. She seems more distant that she ever was.

She’s out the door with an air of regret trailing behind her. And, like that, Jughead knows that he’s never going to see her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. You can go ahead and hate me in the comments, I deserve it. <3
> 
> PS.1: For any of you sceptics out there, doubting Betty's choice to say yes to Archie, in this story there is a reason that, in her books, is much more important than romantic feelings and whatnot. Knowing Betty and her character, she would choose to stay by Archie because of that reason. If anything, it's more solid than the one Jughead uses to justify his own actions. Let me see your imagination run wild!  
> PS. 2: Cheating is NEVER a "cool" concept. It doesn't matter if it is an one-night temptation or the love of someone's life knocking at their door after years of longing, respect for the person somebody is an relationship with and self-respect is always a priority. The purpose of this story is not to romantize such behavior or promote it; it's just artistic license and a take on how a series of choices can turn two lives into a complicated mess of misery. Bottom line, I was feeling angsty and my muse took a weird liking in this idea. :)
> 
> End of rant, let me know what you think! <3


	2. …and in their triumph die, like fire and powder…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life was kicking my butt these last couple of months and with each episode Riverdale was leaving me more and more uninpired. Sorry for being once again an awful person and leaving you hanging. Hope you're still interested in this story. <3
> 
> Α/Ν 1: The parts in italics are flashbacks.  
> A/N 2: Clearly, I'm not a doctor. All the medical information is a mix of the results of a small Internet search and my past obsession with Grey's Anatomy.  
> A/N 3: When writing Sabrina I had a blond Sophie Turner in my mind. Just in case you wanted a face to go with the story.:)

 

 

There is an arrangement of white lilies, lush and delicately fragrant, standing tall against the wide arched window. As the cool white light of the early morning caresses the blossoming pristine petals, the colors merge together, unite, creating an eerie scenery of the Great Beyond, a glimpse of Heaven to the mundane essence of today’s immemorial ritual.

_Heaven_ , she thinks. Today, she really needs to believe it exists.

It seems like her feet have grown roots on a particular spot on the thick burgundy carpet.  She is unmoving under a numbing spell that keeps her mind intact and her muscles blissfully relaxed, resembling the content tingle of the sore tissues after a morning run. In a perfect world, with real-life dollhouses and people as euphorically ignorant as the plastic miniatures of their human nature, she would have gone for her regular run an hour ago, she would be stocking oxygen and refreshing earth-scent in her lungs right at this very moment and, after a mental good-morning greeting to her childhood home, she would take the route back to her new home, where the chill dampness on her cheeks would meet the familiar warmth of mint-flavoured lips and an easy smile. In her magic-deprived world though, she is in an itchy dress. Modest on her neckline, respectable on her knees, with elegant lace from her shoulders to her wrists, tight on her waist, flared around her legs, all black, _too black_ and she hates it, she has been hating it since before she bought it, since the moment he had suggested that she should buy such a dress.

_Just to be prepared_ , he had said.

(Well, joke’s on him, she still isn’t.)

Truth be told, she doesn’t remember the last time she went for a proper run. Or the last time she woke up in the cosy cocoon of their lavender duvet in their luminous master bedroom, the last time the pleasant scent of his eucalyptus body wash travelled from the ensuite bathroom while she was getting dressed for the day, the last time she made breakfast for them (scrambled eggs, croque-monsieur and two gingerbread waffles for an extra good morning; his favorite), the last time he hugged her waist and told her she looked beautiful, the last time he hovered by the front door to straighten his jacket and check his coiffured fiery hair on the antique mirror with a “ _Have a nice day. Don’t kill your mom. I love you._ ” offering her that whole-hearted smile of his that reached his kind eyes, that made them glow _for her_ , before disappearing behind the door to start his own day.

(The teenage Betty Cooper would have been ecstatic with the plethora of times and _the way_ that three-word sentiment was addressed to her from his lips on a daily basis. As if he was trying to make up for the only time he had denied her that tender declaration.) 

It occurs to her that this past month felt like a day or a century all at once. It also occurs to her that, either way, March is ending in barely two days and she, indeed, hasn’t lived any of them, a statement so ironic since she is the only one with a steady heartbeat and regular breathing in the room. But that’s it; she was merely breathing, only fulfilling basic human needs, resting her body on an uncomfortable pull-out mattress and pushing her feet to assist her on every crack of dawn with the intention to fight for the both of them, to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders like the selfless caretaker she always has been. _She’s barely surviving_ , she had heard once her mother informing her sister through a hushed phone call of family concern and that’s the first and maybe the only time she had admitted to herself that Alice Cooper was right.

_“How are those chest pains you’ve been complaining about?”_

_The dusking sun is hitting the profile of the redheaded boy next to her, strong legs sprawled on the porch stairs of the Cooper residence, elbows resting on the step behind him, guitar leaning against the railing to be allowed a break from his skilled fingers. He’s lightly tanned from working at the construction site under the summer sun and a mass of well-built muscles and anyone would be intimidated by his voluptuous jock physic but she isn’t. Because his eyes are following with childlike curiosity the lines of departing airplanes in the sky and his crossed ankles are creating a light tune as the tips of his black Converse collide rhythmically with each other._

_“Betty…” he draws out in that manner that indicates how well he knows her. “I’m fine, you don’t have to worry about me.” He turns to assure her with an honest smile. “It’s probably from all the heavy-lifting at work or I just overdone it with exercise lately.” He shakes the fiery locks of his damp, just-got-out-of-the-shower hair from his eyes and turns his attention back at the violet sky. “I should really start reminding myself that I’m leaving for Berklee to study music, not Notre Dame like Reggie and all the ridiculous sets of abs he has to maintain to pull through even the first semester.”_

_She watches him smirk teasingly, her frown of concern still wrinkling her eyebrows. “You still have that appointment in Greendale though, right?”_

_“Um, can I do otherwise?” he replies in one of his rare moments of sarcasm. “Four out of the six words that you say to me every day are ‘doctor’, ‘Greendale’, ‘you must’.” He throws her a lopsided smirk and a playful glance and again it’s a rare moment, a rare moment of her managing a small smile back._

_“What are the other two?” her tone is light, almost the easy-going Betty Cooper form back then, and he smiles bigger, pleased with himself that he managed to find a hint that this version of Betty, his best friend Betty, still exists._

_“Probably ‘seriously, Archie!’ in that high-pitched tone of yours that means I’m in trouble.” He tries to imitate her voice and his failed attempt along with his sheepish look actually makes her chuckle. Faint and for a fraction of a second but still, he makes her chuckle. And his chest now hurts for a reason he doesn’t quite understand._

_Betty composes herself quickly, instantly, and averts her sad eyes down to her lap. The multiple layers of white gauze that are wrapped around both her palms are a sight that cracks painfully the pieces of her already broken heart so she keeps her gaze on her way too oversized sweatpants, picking at some invisible loose threads of cloth. “Sorry about the nagging…” she tells him in a small voice._

_She really needs to leave room for people to breathe. Otherwise, she will end up all alone. She is sure of it now; recent history confirms all her lifelong insecurities and even some more._

_He sits up, rests his elbows on his bended knees now, noticing the sullen take in her mood but keeping his eyes ahead. “Nah, it’s alright._ _” He sighs then faces her, his turn to examine her profile._ _“You’re Betty, you care about literally everyone on this planet. I just hope that you’re starting to care about yourself too, you know.” He nudges her side lightly with his elbow and worries the inside of his lower lip when he sees her blinking rapidly, an action he came to recognise as her trying to keep her tears at bay, trying to not break completely. “How are you holding up?” he asks her tentatively, hushed, a deep crease of concern appearing on his forehead._

_She sniffs loudly and bounces her head back, as if she is determined to make herself shiny and new again. “If you’re asking in which doorstep you’ll find me curled up and sobbing next, then, don’t worry, I don’t intend on repeating that.” She aims the sentence to come out as a joke but her tone is bitter, disappointed, harsh, anything but humorous. Defeated, she drops her head back down. She is not quite there yet and she highly doubts she’ll be happier anytime soon or ever. “It’s been a month, I’m…managing.”_

_His hazel eyes cloud with the shadows that day left forever staining his mind and without even looking at him, Betty knows that he is haunted by her mess of a self. He never knew, he always thought of her as the babbly, happy, sunshine of a friend. And what he saw that day was the epitome of her short-circuited mind;_ _her laying on a doorstep in a foetus position, shivering from the hard sobs that were wrecking her body, clutching her knees against her chest with hands dripping of blood and staining the denim. It was the second time he took somebody to the hospital, carried an almost lifeless body through the heavy wooden doors while shouting in despair for help and he doesn’t need to say it for her to know that he felt equally terrified as the first time._

_Instead, he tries to ease both their minds._

_“Well, you’re leaving for Columbia soon, that sure is damn exciting.”_

_“I don’t know…” she sighs, never ever meeting his eyes. “I’m doubting all of my decisions at the moment. And going to New York was a plan that involved two people.” Her voice breaks at the end of her sentence and she wants to cry but she is fighting back, sick of the perpetual tears in her eyes._

_“If there’s any consolation, I miss him too.” He confesses softly and it’s true, because he left both of them behind and it stings that his best friend didn’t trust him enough to let him know what was going on with his life or simply say goodbye. But he watches as her lip begins to tremble and her face wrinkles in a heart-breaking, silent sob and he knows that he needs to be the strong one here, he needs to put himself second for once and be there for her. Betty silently thanks him for that every day; she’ll make sure to do it out loud too sometime._

_“We’re in this together.” He reassures her in that Andrews’ tone that indicates a promise and he wants to touch her somehow, offer her comfort, but he is unsure of what to do so he scoops a little closer to her, letting the side of his thigh touch hers, letting her know that he is here, by her side._

_Betty blinks rapidly again, forcing her tears back and willing her mind to focus on other things, more important things. “Um, when-when is the appointment?”_

_“Thursday, eight o’clock.” He simply answers._

_“I’ll come with.” He simply replies._

_He’s taken off guard. She hasn’t been out of those oversized clothes for a month now, she hasn’t been out of her house for anything but to entertain his attempt to take her mind off things and that for barely an hour day by day, never away from her porch steps. He wants to say yes but then again that’s not an appropriate reason for her to want to hit the streets again. Let alone add more worries to her already troubled head._

_“Betty, really, you don’t have to.” He brushes her off with a nonchalant shake of his head. “I’m sure it’s just some mild muscle straining or something.”_

_“I’ll come with.” She repeats and turns to look at him for the first time this evening. Behind her red rimed, tired eyes there’s a spark of determination that reminds him again of the Betty he used to know. “We’re the two of us now, Arch… We gotta stick together.”_

Somewhere deep in the hollow corridors of her mind Betty registers the soft pitter-patter of feet on carpet, as people are starting to fill the wide, dual-aspect hall in front of the secluded area she is adamant to abandon. She can hear the humming of faint whispers, she can see the dancing shadows of their clad-in-black silhouettes, she can feel the sorrow. It reminds her of that last month in the hospital, that godawful waiting room, the people coming and going, the hushed whispers through the sterile white walls. It was nothing like the rest of the eleven years they lived together. Before, they would just go in and out; it wasn’t easy but they had their home to get back to and peaceful moments, happy moments, moments that made them forget. But there was nothing peaceful in the silence of those last twenty-eight days. It was just waiting under the heavy weight of a single word; _terminal_.

(Betty has decided that this is the second word she hates.)

The skin of her fingertips tingles, her hands itching to do something than stay slug on her sides. The control freak in her kicks in and suddenly she feels like everything is done wrong, that the flowers are too bright and the choice of attire too plain and everything is a mess and nothing is according to plan and she _needs to_ _fix things_. When she un-sticks herself from her languor state, her legs are wobbly and a rush of blood to her head makes her dizzy – probably because she didn’t have anything for breakfast or because she doesn’t remember eating dinner yesterday or lunch or having any regular meal these days for that matter – but she pushes the feeling down and then pushes herself to balance on her medium-height heels.  She doesn’t remember getting dressed either but she thinks that probably her mom and Polly did the honours while she was too busy staring at the side of their bed that was his and now will stay empty forever.

She goes to the lush bouquet of lilies that was the center of her previous empty gaze and rearranges it, even though it is already styled to perfection. She runs her hands over the already smooth expanse of a red velvet tablecloth, even though she is aware this isn’t the room the service is going to be held. She brushes off the skirt of her dress, picks invisible fluff off her opaque black tights, checks if the patent leather of her Mary-Jane heels is spotless, secures that some of her hair is pulled nicely at the back of her head whereas the rest lays in her natural curls down her back. There’s nothing left for her to do and she panics, looking frantically around the room for something, _anything_ , until her glossy eyes come across its centrepiece.

It comes as a shock once again. She is afraid that something is wrong with her brain too because she was there when the people from the funeral home wheeled it inside, when her mother held her shoulders tighter and her sister started sobbing silently beside her. Still, the image is so traumatizing that it makes her chest heave as if she is coming face to face with reality for the first time. But how can she comprehend such reality in which something so awful happened to them? In which, he is laying unmoving and with his boyish heart destined not to beat again?

Archie Andrews, her childhood best friend, her husband, frozen at the age of thirty forever.

She takes some small steps forward to reach him, her fingers trembling as they come to hold on the edge of the open, mahogany and ceremoniously polished, coffin he is laying inside. Tears flood her eyes at the lack of his trademark – his fiery red hair, his hollow cheeks, the paleness of his skin and her heart aches at the sight, sinks at the pit of her stomach, bleeds in an unbearable sorrow she felt only once before. And she cries – she doesn’t sob, she doesn’t scream – she just cries, a constant wailing murmur with salty tears running silently down her cheeks as she fixes his tie, smooths the lapels of his dark blue jacket, secures the pick of his guitar under his folded hands against his chest and mentally pours her heart out at him, offers him the ‘thank you’ he deserves, the ‘I love you’ in the way she never managed to utter when looking at his warm hazel eyes instead of a pair of haunting blue ones.

Her palm lingers on the place his amazing heart used to thud rapidly under her touch and the silver shine of the beautiful diamond he had chosen to propose to her along with her wedding band contradict with the elegant blue material of his suit. For a shocking second, she almost senses it again, that strong _thud thud thud_ that supplied him with life, and she waits, _prays_ , for him to open his eyes and burst out laughing in that boisterous way of his, tell her that this is one of his stupid juvenile pranks and that he is here, he is going to be here for a long time and that she won’t get rid of him that easily, just like he promised her a lifetime ago.

_She is examining her grey minimalistic surroundings when a light touch on her knee startles her, foreign fingers brushing delicately the seam of her blue jeans on the inside. The action succeeds in halting the nervous bouncing of her leg that she isn’t even aware of and Betty sighs, offering an apologetic look to the boy seating on an identical leather armchair next to the one she is occupying._

_“Relax.” Archie_ _prompts her in a hushed murmur, patting her knee once before retracting his hand and dropping it on his lap._ _“It’s just a follow up appointment, nothing to be stressed about.”_

_She doesn’t like follow up appointments. They have an undertone of uncertainty, an essence of alarming doubt that doesn’t sit well with her need of control and order. Right now, she needs something solid in her life._

_Her anxious eyes wander around them; there’s a bald, middle-aged man across them at the leather couch, a woman and a teenage boy at the other end, both engrossed on something on the muted TV against the wall to their left and a man at probably his early forties standing next to the window and talking on his phone on the lowest octave possible, not to disturb the heavy silence of the room. Betty is not that naïve to believe_ _that these people are here for a simple check-up. Some, maybe even all of them, are way too accustomed to this room, to this routine of coming and going, checking, fighting, hoping. And although she feels bad for even thinking it, she wishes that their routine doesn’t become his too._

_“What if something is wrong?” she asks in a small voice, not even daring to think that there’s a hint of reality in her worries. It amazes her how laidback he appears, calm, cool as a breeze, as if his name is not the one written at the top corner of some specialized chest x-rays, already in the doctor’s office behind them. “I’ve been reading all night yesterday and chest pains are responsible for a lot of stuff; lung problems, heart failures—”_

_“Wow, Betty, way to keep me positive._ _” He cuts her neurotic ramble off with an amused smirk._ _“And I thought we weren’t supposed to rely on Google for any health related problem.” His bushy eyebrows shoot up matter-of-factly, reminding her of her own words regarding the internet and its usual far-fetched interpretations of simple symptoms._

_She flinches apologetically. “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m being paranoid here.” He looks so healthy with his alit eyes, his board shoulders, his strong athletic physic clad in a white Henley t-shirt and some jeans and she just can’t believe that there’s even the slimmest possibility that something is deteriorating his vigorous existence from the inside. He’s eighteen years old, for God’s sake; he is supposed to be invisible._

_“If something happens to you, Archie Andrews, I swear to you, I’ll disown you.” She warns him, only half-jokingly, the adorable bun atop her head in disagreement with her strict pout and her challenging Bambi eyes and the image makes him chuckle silently, shaking his head at how ridiculously lovable she is being._

_“Please…_ _” he scoffs lowly, leaning closer to whisper to her, like they are eight again and conspiring to break into the terrifying unknown that was the Coopers’ attic._ _“_ _You know you’re not getting rid of me that easily. You’re stuck with me for a long time.” He offers her a genuine smile and she manages a small one back, a promise sealed with eyes connected. “Besides,” he sighs contently, making a broad gesture out of draping his arm over her shoulders and squeezing her to his side “you and me are going places. Archie Andrews, world-famous rock star, Betty Cooper, exclusive on-tour photojournalist and publicist; we got this shit figured out._ _”_

_He is excited, his wide, pleased smile tells her so. The plan sounds_ _utopian in her ears – now and every single time out of the nth he has been blabbing about it throughout this last month – but the dreamer in him makes her want to see the world with a different set of eyes and let herself forget about the bullet wound in her still grieving heart. He winks and playfully squeezes her messy bun in affection and for the first time Betty offers him a genuine smile._

_A trip around the world with her childhood friend doesn’t sound so bad at the moment._

_Ten minutes later they are ushered into the doctor’s office and his smile-adorned greeting is timid just like the words that follow out of his thin lips in the form of excessive medical terms and calculated percentages and promises, promises of sufficient treatment, of a quality of life, of hope. And then there is buzzing in her ears and silence in her mind; and a hand reaching desperately for her own._

_She wishes she had said yes to that trip when she still had the chance._

The greige tint of the memory flutters behind her wet eyelids as the shadow of somebody’s presence invades her peripheral vision. She doesn’t need to look up to know who it is. She could recognize him everywhere, with eyes closed, with senses deprived, with miles and oceans and crowds between them. He has that something that she _knows_ , so deeply that’s prescribed into her own cells and DNA code, and that bounds her forever to his existence, like he is the north to the magnetic needle of her life compass.

She looks up at him and the scene is so familiar, a strong Deja-vu of the first time they had to attend a similar morbid occasion, two teens back then too caught up in searching for the truth to acknowledge the strong pull between them. She remembers that it was the first time she had seen him in formal attire, a black suit too big for his lanky boyish figure to pass as new or his own, but there was a fluttering wave of appreciation in her chest and a blushing heat on her cheekbones that made her smile and think that there was so much more to him that he let on, that he was definitely the next mystery she wanted to unfold.

At sixteen she thought that she had figured him all out. Today, months before him also joining the club of the big thirty, she doesn’t know if inside of him there’s even an ounce of that awkwardly shy boy in her teenage bedroom.

(The grievous vacancy in his glistering eyes tells her that there is.)

He is standing across her with a black suit once again but everything is so different this time. The material looks expensive and steam-ironed to perfection, the white dress shirt underneath is silk, the black tie around his neck in an elegant knot and tucked neatly under his buttoned jacket. It fits him like a glove, it shows off perfectly his now more filled out, manly physic and in any other occasion Betty firmly believes that he would be the most talked-about man in the room.  His hair is shorter than the last time she saw him – she recognizes the thin line between his usual pretentiously unpretentious messy hairstyle and his unruly, in-need-of-a-haircut mane – and in its best behaviour, lush ebony waves groomed to the side with the help of some hair product that makes him look dapper and respectful of the occasion.

They don’t say anything, they just look at each other for what feels like ages and that’s enough of a conversation for them. It amazes her how his face contradicts so boldly with his appearance; the perpetual bags under his eyes are more painfully defined, his baby blues red-rimmed, the agile spark in their colour vanished. He looks broken, lost, as if he doesn’t know how he got here or why he is here and although Betty is aware she looks exactly the same, or even worse, she is still surprised at the wreck of a man she is facing. Then again, it has barely been twenty-four hours since he learnt that he is supposed to be burying his brother today.

(Ironically, in the mist of her grief, a small part of her feels happy he hasn’t forgotten that he still belongs to this unorthodox family of three.)

A silhouette shifts to his side and Betty now registers that he’s not alone, that someone has been here with him all along, witnessing something that felt so private between them, _so theirs_. She catches his posture stiffen the moment her sullen eyes dart left and she feels her own shoulders roll back in defence, in a weird need to urge herself to appear collected and proper, confident even. The woman she faces doesn’t need an introduction; she is the one Betty kept comparing herself to since the time she saw her in an amorous embrace with the man that was supposed to be her other half.

In her mind, she was always losing the battle against her dashing looks and cultured personality. Seeing her from up-close drives the fatal sword through the Achilles heel of her zero to none self-esteem.

Betty instantly thinks that the impression she had of her was completely inaccurate. She is not just beautiful, she is _stunning_ , the kind of woman that turns heads as soon as she walks into a room and she does it so effortlessly, like breathing or blinking. She recalls all those ill-mannered jocks that had something degrading to say about Jughead Jones’ high school, dark parade persona or the handful of times someone had made a comment about him “scoring” Betty Cooper and she can clearly picture how shocked they would be if they saw him now with such a girl on his arm. The situation doesn’t appear weird in her eyes; she always found him the handsomest amongst the sea of Riverdale boys – or boys in general for that matter – and with the promising genes of his father that made him grow into an even more good-looking adult, along with this witty personality, extreme intelligence and chivalrous good-guy persona, she is not the slightest surprised that a woman like her is proud to call him hers.

(That also means, though, that Betty feels even more inadequate of even dreaming of filling her shoes.)

Her gorgeous blonde hair is in soft, sleek waves up until the middle of her waist and her eyes so crystal-clear green and electric that they appear unworldly. She is barely wearing makeup, just a hint of mascara, blush and maybe some lip balm, and she is such a natural beauty that Betty feels a teen again and way more intimidated than she ever was in the school locker room, surrounded by all those girls that always were prettier, sexier, better than her. The long, plaid, dark grey coat she has on reveals a stylish Twiggy-like black dress underneath, elegantly sheer around her neckline and collarbones, and she definitely has the figure of the 60s supermodel regarding how long and lean her legs look in the expensive-looking black loafers she is sporting. Barely two inches shorter than him in flat shoes, she is matching his spotless looks to perfection.

They are the kind of couple that would make anyone stop and stare and there’s a pang of jealously in Betty’s aching heart. More tears are threatening to spill from her already watery eyes and she feels so disappointed at herself and _guilty_ , guilty that she is already defiling the memory of the man that saved her from herself so many years ago by letting the tiny voice of her subconscious still seek the affection of the other man in her life, the one that got away.

“Hello, I’m Sabrina.” The woman surprises both Betty and the man on her side when she speaks up, tentatively approaching the grieving widow with a polite, comforting smile. The second surprise comes in the form of a hug, brief and delicately gentle, but warm enough to convey her genuine condolences.

Betty doesn’t reciprocate the action. She just stays frozen and stares vacantly at the carpeted floor over her coat-clad shoulder.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” She pulls back after a heartbeat to address her and Betty just stares again, like the words that are coming out of her mouth are inaudible or the white background noise of a no-signal TV. Betty feels dumb, hell, she is sure she _looks_ dumb and she despises herself for appearing so plain and unworthy in comparison to her.  

“I wish I’ve met you under other circumstances. Jughead talked very fondly of you and your husband. He must have been a great man.”

At the mention of his name, Betty’s eyes come alive and snap to the man equivalent of the Apple of Discord between them. She catches him looking, at her, only her, always her, piercing and intensely and desperate for answers to a long list of why’s, for reasons to a long list of why-not’s.

(Betty just wonders what are those _fond memories_ that Jughead has shared with her about their past.)

She watches him take two small, hesitant steps, awkward and shy, and the corners of her lips shoot up for a nanosecond at the wave of familiarity his still timid self spreads around them and, then, he is in front of her, all tall, mature and devastated, sans crown-shaped beanie and sherpa jacket but with glossy eyes and a trembling pout that reminds her so damn much of the boy she used to smother with tight embraces and hushed words of praise and devotion on a tiny, squeaky bed with limbs intertwined and hearts synchronized in a frequency they only knew.

He leans down for a hug and it’s surreal. The things she has done with this man, the words they have exchanged mist lust and erotic desperation, topped by their last shameful _lapse of judgement_ nearly two years ago, can make even the more sexually adventurous blush but, yet, there she is now, overwhelmed and dazzled by the simplicity of her being once again in his arms. A large palm falls lightly on the small of her waist, the other finds shelter between her shoulder blades and Betty holds back a gasp at the breath of life his simple touch, his presence, offers to her hibernating existence. His shoulders slump against her, defeated and tired under the weight of the circumstance that brought them back together, and just like that every inch of his skin is pressed against hers and his breath trembles against the hollow of her neck and his eyelids blink against her cheekbone, mixing his fresh tears with the salty stain of her dry ones and she catches on fire, burns whole, gets reborn from her ashes.

The zipper of her dress presses painfully at the end of her spine where his fingers are curling inwards on her skin, gripping tightly because he _needs_ her, it’s been too long, and he _needs_ to coordinate his beating heart to hers and his inhales of oxygen with her breathing supply. And she does it too, she moves one of her immobile hands and clenches the lapel of his jacket in a tight, white-knuckle hold with clawing fingertips right on his heart, as if coexisting is a thing and they are the poster people for it.

Betty allows herself to close her eyes for a second and cherish this magnetic moment. She lets go, she gets lost in his aura, his warmth, his familiar touch and wishes she could just hide inside his arms forever or shrink herself and slip into his pocket without him noticing, without him knowing, just so she could always be surrounded by that scent of his that used to calm her and suffocate her with love. She can still feel it filling her lungs, the calmness and the love, but the build-up of static between their tangled limbs is starting to become threatening, almost fatal. With a slight shock, she is jolted awake and she pulls back, already missing him when his arms fall heavy on his sides.

“Thank you for coming.” She manages to utter in a whiny whisper, upon catching the grey hurricane in his eyes. She means it, despite the fact that her reply is standardized, scripted and rehearsed again and again and again inside her throbbing head so for her not to forget her good wife mantra and fail to measure up to the perfect alter ego of Betty Cooper she reserved for the world. He knows it too but the crease of distaste that appears at the centre of his forehead tells her that he disapproves of her formal tone.

He hates that he’s suddenly part of _that_ world and no longer _her world_.

She challenges him to object with a look.

Instead, Sabrina fills again the silence that speaks volumes between them. “I’ll go find us a seat.” She offers sweetly and caresses his arm and Betty wouldn’t have followed the action of subtle affection, if it wasn’t for a sudden sparkle catching her eye.

There, on her slender ring finger, rests a million-dollar, cushion cut diamond on a silver band decorated with many tiny others.

(As if this day wasn’t yet heart-breaking enough.)

Her stare is cold when it falls on him and she doesn’t need to say anything for him to understand why. He just ducks his head in shame and sniffs discreetly as his _fiancé_ walks away, allowing them some minutes to themselves to reminisce and grieve alone for their friend.

At the sound of her descending footsteps, Betty turns back to the open coffin. She feels more dead that the person laying inside it.

(And angry. Angry that once again she let herself fall into his spell, just like she did that night two years ago, when she stupidly believed she took her revenge, that she ruined him for any other woman.)

Warmth radiates on her back and she knows that he’s approaching her; she can hear the shuffling of his dress shoes on the carpet, messy and agonizing slow, as if he is putting a great effort into the action, as if he can prevent this day from being real by simply closing his eyes at the morbid scene that lays in front of him and waits for him to witness it in order to take flesh and blood and eventually haunt his already turbulent mind forever. His sharp intake of breath turns into a trembling sigh of dreadful shock when he comes across the sight of what’s left of his best friend. This is not the Archie Andrews he remembered from twelve years ago.

He is a vague image at Betty’s peripheral vision but she still can watch him with the corner of her vacant eyes. Silent tears run like a waterfall down his face and he lets them be for a minute or two before he engulfs the grievous icy blue of his eyes under tightly shut eyelids, letting some last rebellious droplets escape in a thick line down his damp cheeks. He licks his lips and then runs a palm slowly down his face to vanish the tell-tale signs of his breakdown.

Betty suspects that he is trying to be the strong one in the room. The protector he always liked to think himself as, especially towards her.

(Truth be told, it was always the other way round. It still is.)

“How…” he chokes, then softly clears his throat. “What happened?” it’s barely a whisper and his voice is harsh, rough around the edges, like he hasn’t used it in a while. It’s way more gravely than his natural, deep tone and Betty catches her fingers curling impossibly tight around the edge of the mahogany material she is holding on for dear life.

She doesn’t address him; she keeps staring at the man that she is saying goodbye to.  

“Lung cancer. He was diagnosed the summer” _you ran away_ , she wants to say but decides not to be petty today and instead adds “the summer before college.” She doesn’t know if he is aware of the situation, if whoever informed him about Archie’s passing went into further details, if he took a minute to ask or if he just dropped the phone like it caught on fire before rushing to get to the town he had forsaken as fast as possible.

(Judging by the deep lines on his forehead and the hollow look in his color-drained eyes, the last scenario is the answer to her brief wondering.)

“He pulled through with therapy and a set of surgeries, he was fine for a couple of years, but then there was a recurrence, until nearly a year ago when he developed a metastasis.” Betty recites perfectly, having mastered her medical knowledge on the field after so many doctor appointments and check-ups and hospital visits and impersonal waiting rooms. “Brain.” She lets him know with a slow nod, casting a small glance his way to see how he’s taking the news. He doesn’t look better than her when she was struck with the realization that her best friend was dying in that doctor’s office in Greendale what seems now a lifetime ago but there is also something else in his red-rimmed eyes when he raises them to her green orbs, regret maybe, _guilt_ , that makes the ice around her heart crack painfully and remind her of all the reasons why she still can’t shake him off her bloodstream.

She quickly turns away, her attention focused on the peacefully laying man once again. “After that the doctors gave him five months. He lasted eight.” Betty concludes with a tearful exhale and something like pride in her shaky voice.

There is silence for a moment, filled with the mystical presence of the people now seated in the main part of the church and the volume of his raging thoughts, as he tries desperately to understand how any of this is fair.

“Did you know?” Jughead stutters.

“Yeah…” she breathes. “From the very start.”

He nods, a painful frown wrinkling his handsome face. He remembers that summer, he remembers a handful of Archie’s calls, he remembers all them going straight to voicemail. If only he had swallowed his pride and picked up, he thinks and resents himself.

He tries to sober up, stands a little straighter and gives her a side glance, scanning her numb profile.

“Are you okay?” he asks, tentatively, as if he is afraid his question is going to open the gates of her pent-up emotions and kick-start a self-destructive breakdown.

But the breakdown he expects never comes. Betty Cooper has stopped breaking down a long time ago.

(Twelve years now she just couldn’t _afford_ to be the one to break down.)

“I am.” She isn’t but she’s going to get there because that was his final wish and her ultimate promise; not to be sad forever. “He made sure that I was.”

_I hope you can be okay too_ , she again wants to add but she strangles her words and stays silent. He’s going to have a wife soon, someone to take care of him and exorcise his demons. She is sure he is going to be more okay than her.

There’s a faint clearing of someone’s throat and Betty sheds her sluggish posture at the sight of Alice Cooper, impeccable as always in a black deux-pièces and hair in a low updo, standing under the wide arch of the secluded room they are in.

“Elizabeth, honey, they’re ready if you are.” she says softly, the softest Betty’s ever heard her talking and with eyes glistening, a rarity for her mother’s always stone-strong defenses. 

She nods and swallows the suffocating lump around her throat. A stray tear follows the route of the many others she has shed as she looks down at him, her childhood best friend, her husband, one final time. She leaves a light caress on his folded hands, lets their wedding bands connect for a minute and then brushes her forefingers under her eyes, getting rid of the salty evidence of her grief.

She turns to Jughead, a motionless statue on her side.  

“I’ll give you a minute to say goodbye.” She whispers lightly and, for an unknown reason, she lets her fingers dance against his in the briefest touch in the history of touches, feeling him fighting with the tremors down his spine and being seconds away from losing that battle.

Betty heads towards the outstretched arm of her mother and lets her engulf her shoulders in a side hug, supporting her as they walk to take their seats for the ceremony. Behind her, Jughead’s resolve snaps and the last thing she hears is sobs, in the form of low, baritone gasps, making her own heart bleed and curse whichever twist of fate is using them as puppets to sadistically entertain the dullness of the universe.

She takes a seat at the front row of the left aisle, next to a ghastly looking Fred Andrews and an inconsolable Mary Andrews that sobs quietly between his shoulder and a pristine white handkerchief. Despite the devastated state he is in, the elder Andrews manages to spare his daughter-in-law a small, sympathetic smile when she lowers herself on the wooden pew next to him. The grimace of a teary smile she attempts back hopes to be good enough of a reciprocation.

In front of her, a large, close-up photo of Archie’s youthful face is displayed on a brown frame. It’s taken on his eighteen birthday, the last birthday he got to spent with his fiery locks still shaping his handsome face, and his charming smile burns brighter than the afternoon sun of the picture’s background. The lump that once again suffocates her throat tells Betty that she needs to focus her attention on something else.

She decides to people-watch.

Her mother sits behind her, joining the whole Cooper family in the second row. Next to her is Polly with her husband, Ethan, her intertwined fingers tightly curled around his elbow and his right hand resting at the hem of her dress, his thumb drawing soothing circles on her knee. The day is emotional for her too; it seems like the Cooper sisters don’t have any luck with ginger-haired husbands. Her dad is here too, at the other side of the couple and away from her mom, but still his presence as the patriarch of this family is very much appreciated by his younger daughter. And by the seriousness of his expression, it truly feels that he is genuinely sad for the boy he’s watched growing up next door. Even Chic is here, not in the second row but hidden in the shadows of the very last, avoiding the father that never accepted him as a son and the mother that always tried too hard to fix him, but he _is_ here and when Betty’s eyes find his identical ones, it’s so hard to keep the threating waterfalls of her tears at bay with how much honest sympathy she finds in their green depths.

It occurs to her that Riverdale’s cathedral is packed with a black sea of people. It seems like everyone in their small town was driven by the desire to pay their respects to the young man that represented the heart of Riverdale, the town with pep. Mayor McCoy and Sheriff Keller are at the front row of the right aisle, other members of the board and the police force are scattered in the crowd. Mr. Weatherbee is here, Coach Clayton, Archie’s colleagues from Riverdale High, his students. Betty’s wondering eyes catch a sullen-looking Pop Tate, the guys working on Andrews Construction, stuff from The Register, their neighbours, old classmates, people from every kind of big or small business around town, even a close group of old Serpents and the lists goes on and on. But there’s something else that surprises her most.

Moose and Midge won’t open their respective businesses today as a symbol of mourning.

Reggie drove twelve hours from Florida just to say goodbye to his teammate and good friend.

Kevin and his husband changed three different airlines so to be in Riverdale on time for the ceremony.

Josie, Valerie and Melody cancelled the most important concert of the European leg of their international tour and travelled back home for only a couple of hours.

Cheryl left a deal with a million-dollar company hanging and flew _commercial_ from Tokyo, Toni joining her halfway from Rome, where the two of them have resided these last couple of years while the former Serpent is finishing up her PhD study in the History of Art. The three of them, along with Penelope Blossom, were the first to arrive in all their expensive, black apparel glory. 

And _him_ of all people, Jughead Jones, is _here_. At the town nobody expected him to return.

It’s like a reunion in the most macabre way possible.

_If any of those bastards doesn’t show up in my funeral, I’m gonna do some serious haunting, Betty_ ; she hears his words loud and clear in her head, along with the bittersweet chuckle that always accompanied them, and she hopes that wherever he is, _if_ he is somewhere, he can see how much people loved him and already miss him.

(She and the raven-haired man, who rushes out of the back room of the church with trembling hands and head ducked impossible low to hide the redness on his cheeks and the glossy sheen in his blue eyes, the most of all.)

Their eyes collide for the shortest of moments – confirming her speculations that he feels quite as empty as she does – as he walks further down the nave, where Betty watches him take a seat on the vacant space next to his soon-to-be wife. She leans on his side and squeezes his forearm, bringing her hand to his to intertwine their fingers on his thigh as an act of support and love and she earns a tiny huffing smile in return. Betty knows those smiles; after his lopsided smirks she always found them the most endearing. There is a weird tug of jealousy in her chest, of _possessiveness_ , like somebody stole her life and now they’re rubbing it in her face that they did, and that stirs something in her, an anger that all those years was boiling and now it is threatening to explode and destroy.

FP joins them with a series of murmuring hello’s and I’m-sorry’s, the delicate fondness with which he addresses _her_ , after squeezing his son in a supportive hug, being the ultimate dagger that breaks Betty’s heart. They are, in every sense of the word, a family.

Jughead has a family and she doesn’t belong in it.

(Betty didn’t think that could ever be a thing.)

As if he senses her stone-cold eyes on him, Jughead averts his gaze and catches her on the act. Betty snaps her head in front, a hot blush on her cheeks and an extra thud in her heartbeat and focuses on curling her fingers on something more sensible than her own flesh. She succeeds without even a single inch of nail piercing skin just as the pastor walks up to the pulpit and opens the Bible. She _knows_ that Jughead’s eyes are on her all this time.

“We have gathered here today to pay our tribute and our respect to an exceptional young man of our community, our brother, Archibald Eugene Andrews. We’re here to offer our love and support to his family, his wife, the people that loved him…”

The words fade inside Betty’s head until there’s only silence; numb, comforting silence. _His wife_ , the title echoes in the dark corridors of her brain. She considers her life-choices for a moment, the decisions that impacted the course of her life and brought her here this day, a widow at the age of twenty-nine. As she watches Archie’s peaceful profile, surrounded by flower arrangements and bathed in cold light from the wide, arched windows of the church, she wonders if the biggest decision of her life – staying back in Riverdale and marrying him – was actually hers or it was just a dead end, an inevitable compromise of the girl that always gave her everything to others and never asked anything in return.

Her mind goes back to _that_ day.

_The linoleum floor complains with an annoying squeaky sound under the weight of her tan leather boots, her steps sure and knowing, having memorized the route perfectly by now through corridors and corridors of identical rooms. A nice bouquet of white and yellow daisies is tacked delicately on the inside of her elbow and hugged to her chest, a dark blue overnight bag is hanging from her other elbow and a vanilla milkshake from Pop’s is securely being delivered to the occupant of room 45._

_The door is wide open when she approaches, the faint sounds of what seems to be a documentary about Ancient Greek philosophers and their impact on our modern world coming from the flat screen on top of the small dresser. Betty can’t help but raise a teasing eyebrow as she knocks playfully on the doorframe to gain the attention of the young man that rests on the bed at the centre of the room._

_Light brown eyes snap at her direction and his otherwise bored face breaks into a small, side smirk._

_“I’m not really watching that. Background noise, you know?”_

_(Yes, she knows. She does that too when the silence gets too heavy and the loneliness too scary.)_

_Betty just smiles sweetly at him and walks further inside the room, dropping the bag she’s carrying on the brown armchair next to his bed. Then, she offers him the plastic to-go cup she’s holding and enjoys how his eyes seem to go brighter for a second._

_“The doctor is trusting you with a treat today.” She tells him, a hint of delightful hope colouring her voice. “Pop made it extra sugary and with two cherries on top.”_

_He lets a small chuckle and rushes to sit up straighter, a slight wince causing his handsome smile to morph into a deep frown. Betty jolts forward to help but with a shake of his head and a reassuring smile, he leans back on his pillows and takes the sweet drink from her hands. He moans around the straw with the first sip and makes a show of rolling his eyes in delight, making Betty laugh and forget all about his discomfort._

_As he sips away happily and flips through channels in search of something more light and entertaining, she slips off her cream coat and goes into her usual nursing mode. She disposes the withering magnolias from the bedside table, rinses the simple ceramic vase in the ensuite bathroom and then comes back to place the fresh bouquet she brought in water. It’s a habit of hers, bringing him flowers every other day; they add a warm, refreshing scent to this hospital air of waiting and worry. Next, she empties the bag she previously abandoned, juggling two piles of clean clothes to the dresser under the TV; four pairs of pyjamas, a handful of plain t-shirts, some sweatpants, underwear, socks. Once the bag is filled again with the few clothes that were lurking in the humper next to the shower and then placed by the door, ready for Betty to retrieve it when she would slip out of the room hours later after Archie is asleep for the night, that’s the end of her everyday routine._

_(That’s the end of her everyday routine five months now.)_

_“No gory video games today?” Betty asks absentmindedly, while organizing his few and already organized toiletries in the cupboard over the bathroom sink. His PlayStation was hooked at the TV by Fred since the first day Archie was brought in this room, all set with a brand new collection of games and its two controllers. Usually, the male nurses would join him for one or two games when their shifts were close to being over or even some of the_ _young_ _interns_ _during long, uneventful_ _night shifts but still Betty didn’t think he would have any objection to fighting zombies all by himself._

_“Nah…” Betty frowns at the sullen way he declines, walking to the threshold to face him. “It’s not really fun playing alone.”_

_She catches his eyes drop to his mobile, thrown recklessly on the messy covers next to his thigh, and in an instant she knows, she knows what he is talking about, the video game partner he is subtly referring to. He’s been calling him lately, that much she knows too, and from his beat-up face she can assume that all of his calls are unanswered._

_(There’s another reason she should hate him for, Betty tells herself. But her midnight tears over a photo of his that she keeps well-hidden in the drawer of her nightstand have a different opinion.)_

_She walks back to him and decides to change the mood._

_“I’d play you but you’ll lose and you’ll cry like a little girl and we really wouldn’t want that, especially with that cute nurse that’s all heart-eyes for you every time she comes over.” She winks with a teasing smile, as she takes a seat on the armchair._

_Archie laughs lightly, ducking his head in a shyness she’s never seen him sport before. Then again he is in a super life-changing situation._

_“That’s kinda impossible.” He mutters and awkwardly pats the side of his head, tugging self-consciously at the material of the black beanie he is wearing. There is no hint of his trademark red locks peeking at the sides._

_(Betty still isn’t completely comfortable around him in a beanie. It brings too many memories.)_

_“Hey, you’re Archie Andrews! She should be so lucky!” Betty scoffs in an attempt to lift his spirits and he chuckles again, sadly this time. She understands where this insecurity comes from. After Veronica moved back to New York with her parents just before senior year and the long distance did its best to drive them apart and eventually away from each other, Archie never really returned to his previous womanizer mentality. And now, all he can see is himself changing, losing things that any other eighteen-year-old takes for granted, and that scares him. Hell, that even scares Betty – the light that she rarely sees now in his always wholesome eyes – not that she would ever let him know._

_“Okay, enough with this ridiculous pity party. What do you want us to do? Mom doesn’t need me at The Register today so I’m all yours.” The unofficially official internship she does at her parents’ newspaper offers her enough of a distraction and lets her mother off her back, especially after her decision to take a gap year and decide if Columbia and a life in New York is something she wants to pursue after all. Her mother was furious upon hearing the news but Betty really needed some space for herself and some more time with her best friend._

_“I was hoping we could talk for a little bit?” Archie asks tentatively, almost nervously, and Betty’s eyebrows furrow at how serious he looks._

_“Okay…” she agrees softly. She prays that his sudden change in mood doesn’t indicate more bad news._

_He runs a hand to smooth the white sheet that’s pooled around his waist – out of raging nerves, Betty assumes – clears his throat and closes his eyes for a second. She tries to slow down her own rushing heart, reasoning with her always ready-to-panic brain and reassuring herself that her friend looks okay. Well, as okay as anyone with his condition and with having undergone two serious surgeries in the timespan of two months would look._

_With a deep inhale, Archie turns to fully address her._

_“These past five months, I’ve been fighting with something that I never thought would happen to any of us. That notion, you know, that those things happen only to people on TV or other people that are just not us…” he starts and Betty eyes drop to the floor between them. She knows what he means; every time she finds herself on a plastic chair in the waiting room with Fred stoically staring at the wall and Mary murmuring prayers under her trembling breath, she can’t help the angry thoughts of “why is this happening to us?” invade her mind. And then she feels like the worst human being on the planet._

_“I’ve never said that to you, but, the first time I got in this hospital, I was really convinced that I wouldn’t make it. Hell, I’m not even convinced now!” he chuckles with no humor at all and Betty snaps her eyes to him, a darker shade of hurtful anger coloring her irises due to his pessimistic attitude._

_“Arch…” her voice shivers and she frowns painfully. “Why are you talking like that?”_

_“Please, just let me…” he shakes his head, rearranging his thoughts. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m still fighting because you believed that I could.” A tiny smile finds its way on his chapped lips and Betty’s frown becomes deeper. “Because you sacrificed so much and stayed by my side and witnessed_ _my lowest moments_ _and so many awful things that you shouldn’t and you did it with so much strength and support and grace…” His quick rambling stops abruptly as he scoffs in awe-struck disbelief, taking one of her hands to both of his. “You amaze me, Betty Cooper, you are amazing in every sense and every meaning of the word. I wanted you to know that…” there’s such honesty in his words, such warmth, and his smile is broad and so much like the ones he used to sport back then when he was just a carefree teenager and Betty is speechless at the confession and confused by the tender action of his hands and the slight wetness in his genuine eyes._

_Before she gets to say anything, he reaches at the side-table next to their joined hands, retrieving something from its drawer._

_“And I wanted you to have this.” Suddenly, something feels heavy on her palm and when her disorientated eyes slide downwards, there’s a light blue box and a breathtaking princess-cut diamond ring staring back at her._

_Involuntarily, she gasps. Then, a hurricane of tears is threatening to overflow her eyes._

_(They are not happy tears.)_

_“I picked it up online, it was delivered a couple of days ago.” She can hear Archie somewhere in the background explaining. “I guess I was packing up the courage…” he scoffs a nervous chuckle. “I hope you like it but, if you don’t, I’m sure I can return it and you can pick whatever you like…”_

_“I…” Betty stutters, hands trembling under the weight of the tiny box and eyes blinking down rapidly at the iridescent ring to shake away the salty tears. “I don’t understand.”_

_“I want you to be my wife, Betty.” His words sound similar to the explosion of a bomb and she jumps at the impact, head jolting up to face him again. “I know that we are young and that’s definitely not what you imagined, a proposal in an awful hospital room or someone like me asking you to marry him but –”_

_She cuts him off again, her voice an octave higher and laced with something more dreadful than panic._

_“If this is a weird way of you showing me your gratitude or something, I really don’t need–” the words are running out of her mouth in alarm, fighting against a suffocating lump that is starting to form at the base of her neck, choking her._

_“This is not an act of gratitude or a pity case, Betty.” It’s his turn to cut her off, his voice steady and sure. “This is me wanting you. Fair and square. Sudden, I know, but those five months you were the only person that could bring me back when the white light was drawing me in. You’re my angel, Betty Cooper. You’ve always been but I was too blind and too stupid to see it.” He tells her with a tone that indicates love and worship and he means it, she knows he does, by the way his hands are gently caressing hers and his eyes wrinkle lovingly at the sides._

_She lets something between a sob and a heartbreaking huff and then the tears are running like wild waterfalls down her flustered cheeks._

_“Archie, I…”_

_She wants to say that she can’t marry him. That his words were beautiful and it really meant a lot coming from him. That she’s more than happy to be his rock even without a ring on her finger that symbolizes so many things that they aren’t. That all this time he was talking there wasn’t a single second that she didn’t think about a certain raven-haired boy and how wrong it felt that he wasn’t at the redhead’s place._

_(It stupid but she feels like she is the one betraying him.)_

_“I know what you’re thinking.” Archie interrupts her thoughts, bringing a hand to her chin to make her look at him. She is crying so hard right now that some hiccups are shaking her body, her nails dangerously close to the rosy palm of the hand that curls on top of her thigh. “He’s still here” he lets go of her chin to tap two fingers lightly over the place on her sweater where her heart is beating like crazy, Betty letting a breathy sob as a confirmation “and he’ll probably be here forever. But it’s okay. I’m okay with that.”_

_She bits her lip at that and shakes her head at the calm way he’s accepting the fact that he’s never going to measure up to her first and possibly only love. It sounds sick in her ears and so wrong; he deserves way more than a pathetic girl hung up on_ _false hope and_ _a photograph._

_“I just want you by my side, officially mine, with that smile that you always come in with and brightens even this godawful place.” Archie’s lips tug upwards at the image and he flicks a tear off her cheekbone, causing more to follow its trail. “And who knows? Maybe one day, when we’re old and grumpy and surrounded by cats and dogs and other old-people things, you will turn and look at me the way you used to look at him. I just want you to help me see that day, Betty.” He pleads, eyes shimmering with joy and excitement, and Betty is at a loss and the blood is boiling inside her head making her dizzy, making her wonder if she has it in her to deprive him of such a dream._

_“You don’t have to answer me right now.” He responds to her silence but takes the ring out of the box and slides it delicately on the appropriate finger._

_It sparkles like the new hope that ignites at the depths of his kind eyes._

_“Just wear it as a reminder that somebody wishes to have a lifetime with you.”_

_I hope it was a good one, Arch_ , she thinks, as the vision disappears behind the wet curtains of her mourning eyes.

There’s eerie silence in the historic cathedral of their small town, sans the soft crying that echoes around from Mary and other relatives. The pastor is now done talking and he’s moved slightly to the side, beckoning her with a gentle smile to move forward for the eulogy. Betty stands up almost robotically and only when she takes her place behind the microphone, she understands that maybe she should have taken up on her mother’s offer to be her the one to deliver a few words in Archie’s memory.

Hundreds of eyes are staring back at her. She can see them pitying her, mourning not the one that passed but her, her destroyed life, her miserable future. “ _Oh, my dear Elizabeth, grief doesn’t look good on such a pretty face. What a shame!_ ”, the words of her mother’s aunt pop in her brain, along with the look of snooty empathy she addressed her with and Betty wants to scream, wail, kick everyone out and yell that she doesn’t need any of them in her pathetic little life.

She knows she is about to lose it, here, in this podium, in front of all those people and that panics her even more, makes her nails scratch painfully the wooden surface she is trying to anchor herself from and her legs about to give out from the pressure. It all becomes too much, cold sweat leaves zig-zag patterns down her spine, her head spins, her breathing starts to get laboured and she is ready, she starts to let go and welcomes the darkness that is about to swallow her whole and she drowns and drowns and drowns until, a minute before she is lost forever, somebody responds to her last plea of help.

It’s _him_ and she gasps, like a woman getting dragged to the sore after hours of fighting with waves.

His arm comes around her waist, holding tightly and supporting her, and the other stretches in front, his hand taking on the hard task of saving her scratched fingertips from getting further injured from their strong hold on the edge of the podium. When he succeeds, he intertwines his fingers with hers in an action that seemed so familiar but so strange at the same time. He makes sure that she is there with him and alright, connecting their eyes and squeezing the side of her waist once he finds his Betty at the undertones of the most beautiful green shade he’s ever seen, and then indicates her to follow his breathing by holding her close against his chest.

Betty sure feels more disorientated than before. But also safe; cared for and loved and safe.

(It’s the impact of his scent again.)

Unlike her, he is collected, a man ready to handle the situation. He moves them an inch to the side, not letting go even for a second, so now he’s the one standing behind the microphone, being the centre of attention. He clears his throat and all eyes fall on him.

He delivers a eulogy that plays with the strings of her heart and everyone else’s in the room. With words he only knew how to utter and memories Betty thought he had forgotten. At the end, he adds an apology, barely audible to anyone but the person it’s addressed too, but she catches it too in the way his eyes appear more red than before and the grip of his hand on hers that becomes tighter, as he walks her back to her seat.

Before he turns to resume his own, Fred catches his forearm.

“Sit with us.” The elder man instructs him kindly. “He would really want that.” There’s this Andrews sincerity in his eyes, that honorable look that both father and son shared and it makes Jughead duck his head and comply, his heaving chest shuttering with emotion.

They sit hand in hand for the rest of the ceremony.

 

* * *

 

The elegant foursquare house at one of the most picturesque suburbs of Riverdale is one of the many gifts Archie has gotten her through the years. Betty still remembers the first time she saw it; she was in awe. Front and back porches spanning the entire length of the house, spacious wood-adorned living room, huge marble kitchen, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, an attic space, large windows and French doors that showered every inch of it with morning light, it was the house Betty would never even dream that one day she might possess.  

(Such a beautiful house. It deserved a better family.)

Today, it is filled with people. Archie would have loved that.

Betty is currently seated on the white armchair by the crackling fireplace, the one he used to occupy while watching some game on the TV or creating soft melodies with his skillful fingers against the strings of his guitar.  She is supposed to be eating, that’s what the plate filled with a variety of occasion-appropriate food her sister gently left on her lap tells her, but her throat feels closed and her stomach is in a tight knot and she can’t do anything but stare, stare in front at the three people that have fallen into an easy conversation next to the wide bookcase filled with Betty’s favorite literature.

Ethan is talking softly about something that she can’t quite grasp, a tall, handsome and well-built man with dirty blonde hair and neatly-trimmed stubble nodding, as he listens with interest. There is an expensive silver wedding band on the forth finger of his hand that holds his cup of coffee and it matches the diamond embedded one of the woman next to him that sips casually on her lemon water. It’s Veronica Lodge and she is spectacularly gorgeous as usual, looking not a day older than sixteen, with the exception of her shorter hair and the seven-month pregnant belly that stretches adorably her black designer dress.

(It’s gonna be a girl. They’ll name her Audrey.)

They caught up for a bit after the service and the successful businesswoman appeared genuine thrilled about the new chapter in her life, long gone the girl that found terrifying even the idea of herself as a mother and claimed that children didn’t match with high society, career-oriented women. She wonders if her change in mind came with growing up or at the sight of two positive lines flashing back at her. She wonders if change can occur the opposite way and her thoughts travel back to a certain raven-haired man that lurks by the threshold that connects the foyer with the large living room area and nurses his third cup of coffee for the evening.

He had told her once that he would like having kids someday. She remembers him laying half on top of her, sweaty skin over sweaty skin and silly smile on his sated face, twirling one of her frizzy curls between his bony fingers and whispering that a little girl with her soft hair and gorgeous smile would be a pretty amazing addition to the two of them in the future. She had argued that a little miniature of him was what she wanted, his fake offended gasp that followed accompanied with the start of a ridiculous tickle fight that messed his sheets further and brought their bodies even closer, resulting in a fire that kept burning them whole till the wee hours of morning.

Maybe his new wife is going to give him the little girl he always wanted. And maybe he’ll teach her fancy words and help her with her essays and embarrass her with snarky dad comments and overall be the incredible father Betty always believed he would become. Sadly, she will never know.

(And he most definitely will never know that, by some miracle or wicked consequence, her wish has already been granted.)

Suddenly, the air in the room is not enough for her to breathe.

Betty abandons her untouched plate on the coffee table and slips quietly to the kitchen, sparing Jughead no glance as he passes him by. There, it looks like a frozen in time high school party. Polly, Reggie and Moose are leaning back on the kitchen counters talking softly, Valerie and Melody are by the fridge while Josie is dealing with something important on the phone, Midge and Ethel sit at the table, Cheryl and Toni at the kitchen island with a standing Kevin between them. All of them are holding beer bottles and a pack of more is on the table and Betty stops and stares for a minute. At her silent question, Reggie raises his bottle and murmurs “For Andrews” and just as simple she understands. She grabs a beer herself, opens it with her hand and takes a long sip in his memory, before sauntering to the kitchen’s back door. Her palm stings from the metallic cap against her irritated skin, the alcohol burns her empty stomach and Cheryl’s eyes worry too much at the back of her head but, at this point, she doesn’t care about anything and turns the doorknob violently, before disappearing into the dark.

The cold glass clicks lightly as it collides with the white wooden railing, the only sound in the otherwise peaceful nature. Betty exhales deeply and her posture flutters, the armor she secured herself with feeling particularly heavy on her shoulders tonight. The day is filled with too many memories, too many regrets and mistakes and she just needs it to end by now so she can find the peace she so desperately needs.

Behind her, the door opens and closes. Soft footsteps approach and then something warm is laid gently over the thin material of her dress on her shoulders.

It’s his jacket, his scent again. But this time, it doesn’t calm her, it feeds her irritation.

“You shouldn’t be drinking that.” Jughead instructs her softly, untangling the beer bottle from her hands. He’s left only in his dress shirt and he stands next to her, elbows almost touching, mimicking her by looking straight ahead. The liquor churns as he takes a long sip from the bottle, flinching instantly at the taste. “Have you eaten anything?”

The question is rhetorical; he knows that she hasn’t, he kept checking on her since the moment he set foot in this house. Betty holds back a scoff at his sudden concern about her well-being. The nerve of him!

“Do you have a cigarette?” she asks, voice cold and stripped of any emotion.

The corner of her eyes catches the action of his head snapping towards her in shock. “I didn’t know you smoke.” He retorts in disbelief, his face a mask of concern.

Betty’s anger starts to boil. She doesn’t need another judgmental Alice Cooper in her life.

“I don’t.” she continues in a flat, lifeless tone. “But I thought today is the right time to pick up another bad habit.”

_You are the worst of all_ , she bites the inside of her cheek so hard not to add.

“Betty…” he breathes, turning his body to address her fully. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would it change anything?” she wonders out loud.

“Of course it would.” He huffs, hurt by her implication that he wouldn’t give a damn. “I would have been here; I would have helped… Find a doctor in New York, experts, physicians…”

Betty’s eyes snap to his face, ominously dark and wild. “Are you accusing me of not fighting enough for him? Of not doing the best I could to keep him alive?” she dares him to answer.

Jughead senses her tone and takes a mental step back. He is not blaming her, he would never do such thing; he just wanted to be there for them, for _her_.

“I’m just saying that you shouldn’t have carried such a heavy cross all on your own.”

She eyes him for a second, a threatening fire still smoldering in her irises, before she turns back in front, licking the venom off her lips.

“Well, he only wanted me to know, none else.”

Her statement causes a thick veil of silence to cover more confessions that are dying on their lips. The movement of liquor inside glass echoes again and with another sip, Jughead decides to break through the brick wall that separates them.

“You know, I called you.”

“And I didn’t answer.”

He had called her two days after their night in New York. And then a week later. And then two weeks later. And then he stopped, because he refused to be the fool that chased after an empty phantom.

(Betty felt sick to even look at his name on a phone screen.)

“What are you doing?” he suddenly snaps. “Is this so-some kind of game to you?” the volume of his voice is starting to rise, his eyes narrowing, his will slipping. “Revenge? Showing up out of nowhere two years ago, messing with my head and then disappearing like nothing happened?”

He demands explanations to questions he can’t even answer. Betty is just _tired_.

“Stop…” she breathes and closes her eyes, exhausted. “Just show a little respect.”

Jughead scoffs a bitter laugh and she knows that he is in a mood to bite back.

“As if you showed any respect to him that night.”

She instantly sees red and her hand flies up to inflict some physical pain in return to the emotional catastrophe he just caused. Inches away from his face, he catches her wrist, his tight grip making her fall violently against his chest with a gasp.

“What?” Jughead almost growls with eyes crazy and pitch black. “You’re gonna slap me again? Go ahead. Do it.” He challenges, millimeters away from her lips. “You think some momentary sting on my left cheek will ever measure up to the pain I’ve felt for twelve years now?”

“Pain?” she shakes her hand from his hold as forcefully as he captured it, delivering a hard push on his chest. “Will you stop with your sweet nothings and your pretty lies—”

“Lies?” his tone is the epitome of code red anger.

“Yes! Lies!” Betty cries out. “You said you loved me!” his past words of affection come like a frustrating sob out of her lips. “You said that I was the one for you, the only one that you could ever be in love with!”

Her voice reaches an octave that makes his head burn and his chest heave for oxygen.

“I didn’t fall in love after you.” He confesses and his lip trembles, as if he really means it, as if his life stopped the minute he got on his father’s bike and drove away from her.

“Then why is she wearing a ring?” Betty demands to know and the defended drop of his head to the ground is enough of an answer.

She shakes her head in disappointment and turns away, vanishing the trail of some stubborn tears with her fingers. She feels herself shivering under his jacket but she refuses to grasp its lapels and close it more tightly around her body. His scent is making her nauseous.

“If you had said the word,” she hears him hesitate before he continues, soft and certain “I would have sacrificed _everything_ just to be with you.” His promises are still painful and Betty silently sobs at how more difficult and complicated and toxic he is making this connection between them. “Even though you betrayed me…”

“Betrayed you?” She really can’t believe him. “After everything, you’re still blaming me for marrying him? Are you that heartless?” There is disgust in her eyes when she looks at him again, not quite recognizing the person that he has become.

“Yes, I am heartless!” Jughead snaps back. “Without a heart, you made sure of that.” He smirks bitterly, shaking his head at how she always seemed to label him as the devil whereas she remained the angel. “Because I gave it to you and I can never take it back. Do you know what it feels like to live all those years without it?” there is a raspiness in his voice, a breathy desperation that matches the deep frown on his forehead and the watery essence of his eyes.

“Do I know?” she asks in a small voice, blinking rapidly to hold back her own tears. “Do I know how that feels?” her voice is gradually rising as she comes closer and stands tall in front of him, adding in an angry crescendo. “Yes, you bastard, I know!”

He looks at her with that passive aggressive look of his, eyelids fluttering and posture hardening, and she can’t stop herself now, his words has unleashed the wounded beast that was stoically suffering all those years inside her chest.

“But there are so many things that you don’t.” she tells him, bitterly. “You don’t know how it felt to have your life turn upside down overnight because of a nine-letter diagnosis on a piece of paper. To plaster a fake smile when people congratulate you on a marriage that it’s bound to have no future.” She laughs with no humour at all before turning serious again, with that look of agonizing madness in her eyes. “You don’t know how it felt to witness him losing his energy to live day by day or to come home and see him sprawled on the bathroom floor because his muscles were starting to atrophy. How he died but not before he couldn’t talk or walk or even recognise me,” she takes a breathy inhale “recognise his own father.” A soft, devastated sob rips through her chest but she holds her head up and continues; he should know what those twelve years were for her.

“Have you ever heard a person take their last breath, Jughead?” she licks the salt off her upper lip as his eyes slide to her face, terrified and forlorn. “Because I have. I was in the room with him and I can still hear it exactly how it sounded.” Her voice breaks again, her hand flying to her mouth to suppress a gut-wrenching sob, Jughead flinching at the sound. “But you don’t know about it,” she sniffs loudly and her arms open in a grand nonchalant gesture as she continues to break down “you don’t know anything, you don’t even know that you are –”

She is suddenly inside his arms, in a side hug that collides her with his chest, and his fingers dig on her shoulder and she is sobbing hard against him while he kisses the top of her head and shushes her but it feels wrong and she suffocates and her lungs hurt and –  

“No, no, no, I can’t, I can’t do this anymore!” Betty squirms furiously away from his strong hold, catching a glimpse of hurt on his handsome, tear-stained face. “I’m not mad at you, Jughead, I’m not.” She gives up, letting her hands fall to her sides in exhaustion and surrender. “I’m proud of you,” she tells him truthfully and watches as his face softens, almost breaks at the sound of those tiny words coming from her mouth, the one that always meant the most to him “proud that you got out of this town, made your dreams come true, found somebody that loves you.” She sullenly admits, even though this hurts her the most.

“And I forgave you a long time ago. But there are so many things that I can’t forget, Jug, and I need you to let me breathe!” Betty begs, a frustrated whine leaving her lips in coordination with more tears. “I don’t want to be sad anymore, I can’t handle it, I can’t handle my heart getting broken every time I see your face!” she takes a handful of his shirt and shakes him lightly, like she is holding on for dear life or desperately trying to let go, and now he is crying too, ducks his head and sobs for all the pain he has caused to the both of them.

“So please.” The words die on her lips, a breathy hiccup adorning her simple plea to let her be. “Do the thing you know best; take your wife and leave.”

His eyes become two round balls of fear and shock but she doesn’t allow herself to cave at his obvious panic now that he realizes that he's losing her for good. She slides off his jacket and pushes it gently on his chest, before turning to walk away.

She hears him call her and it hurts, it hurts so much that when she opens the door and walks inside she feels like she is now walking without a heart, a brain, lungs and all the vital things that supply her with life. Now she understands the true meaning of being empty.

From across the room, Cheryl’s anxious eyes connect with hers and at her silent question she replies with a simple shake of her head.

(No, I couldn’t do it. No, I didn’t tell him. No, he will never know.)

She runs to her bedroom and throws herself on the bed, crying until everyone leaves and she is now alone, forever.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another super heavy and angst-filled chapter I know. I wish I could post something more light (even though a lighter story is coming very, very, _very_ soon) after the AMAZING reunion we had on the show but that's how I envisioned this story going so I'm sticking with my muse. You have every right to go on and hate me on the comments.  <3
> 
> (And now go watch the scene™. That's what I'm gonna do too for the hundredth time.)


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